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Library of The Theological Seminary 


PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 


DIKE 


PRESENTED BY 


Philip W. Warner 
BVGeS LOUme B40 fa Ue feo 
Benson) LOULS. he ooo oo 


The hymnody of the Christian 
church 





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THE HYMNODY 


OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 


LOUIS F. BENSON, D.D. 
















. THE ! 
HYMNODY OF. THE 
CHRISTIAN CHURCH 


THE LECTURES 
ON “THE L. P. STONE FOUNDATION’’ 
PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
1926 














iF BY 
LOUIS F. BENSON, D.D. 










NEW oe YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1927, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


THE HYMNODY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 
ie 3 see 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PREFACE 


A good Providence has committed to the hands 
of every pastor, for such use as he can make of them, 
the three arts that lie nearest the human heart,— 
speech, poetry and music. The mission of poetry 
and music no doubt transcends the limits of congre- 
gational singing, but nevertheless it proves most 
spiritually effective in a self-expression by the people 
themselves in common song. 

With these thoughts in mind I welcomed the call 
to deliver the Stone Lectures at Princeton as an 
opportunity to present the whole subject of our 
Christian Hymnody to those soon to be concerned 
in its administration in a way that might prove help- 
ful in preparing them for so great a responsibility. 
In retaining the lecture-form here I have sought not 
only to express my appreciation of the original op- 
portunity but also to retain something of the larger 
freedom of direct address. 

In preparing the lectures for print I have omitted 
most of the passing pleasantries (and other things) 
that emphasized the ecclesiastical connection of the 
lecturer and a majority of his hearers. But even in 
a book for wider use, if that may be, it is convenient 
to have our thoughts directed to some specific object, 


whether it be a focusing point for one’s rambling 
Vv 


v1 Preface 

reflections or a target for one’s reproaches. And so, 
amid references to many communions, I have here 
and there singled out the Presbyterian to serve such 
a purpose; particularly in making, for reasons fully 
stated, its Hymnal of 1895 the basis for a discussion 
of the textual criticism of hymns. 

The motive that runs through the book like a 
recurrent refrain is that the hymn belongs among 
the things of the spirit, and that hymnody is essen- 
tially a spiritual function. The hymn is a melody in 
the individual heart: hymnody is the harmony of 
brotherhood. 

Lecture I reveals its spiritual foundation. Lec- 
ture II shows how precariously, even in the Church, 
the hymn, like other things of the spirit, has main- 
tained a footing. Lecture III shows how the elusive, 
spiritual thing we call a hymn relates itself to the 
forms of speech we call literature. Lectures IV and 
V take up the religious functions of the hymn, its 
spiritual and literary content, its fit expression. The 
last lecture discusses the spiritualization of music, 
to the end that the hymn may fulfill its destiny as 
common song. 

Hymnody, then, is a spiritual function, and its 
welfare proceeds from the heart. Nevertheless its 
congregational expression needs guidance and a 
thoughtful ordering as much now as at Corinth in 
the days of St. Paul. Most of all it needs the in- 
spiration which can only be imparted to preoccupied 
hearts by a pastor who cherishes it as among the best 





Preface Vil 


of God’s gifts, and understands it because he has 
learned the lessons of its chequered history, has 
measured its resources and traced the different lines 
of its ministry; and who is resolute to cultivate the 
spirit of song among his people. 

It is the special purpose of this book to furnish 
the materials for that better understanding of Chris- 
tian Hymnody as a preparation for getting the most 
we can out of it in life and worship. 

Beyond expressing a sense of the practical im- 
portance of the subject I do not know that I can 
offer any inducement to read the book except to say 
that I have made it as interesting as I could. I 
might add that it takes the place of a Primer of 
Hymnology long in mind, and that even its dullest 
passages press more lightly upon human patience 
than the primer would have done. 


Philadelphia, 
July 27th, 1927. 








CONTENTS 
LECTURE ONE 


THE APOSTOLIC IDEAL OF HYMNODY 


PAGD 
I Tue Hrun: *. : i f i 
Tad a os Relation ah Theology : e ; 1 
1 lu Comparative Religion . f ; ; 22 
m1 In Its Christian Definition . ; : : 23 
II THe InaucuraTIon oF CurisT1AN Sonc : 25 
III Curistian SonG IN THE  JEWISH-CHRISTIAN 
CHURCH : : 29 
IV Curistian SoNG IN THE ape: Caureer: sibs 
1 The Liberty of Christian Praise ; 33% 
ui The Inspirational Hymn. . : 35 
ur The Enrichment of the Hymnody : Ce he: 
V Sr. Pauw’s THErory or Hymnopy : ’ 39 
VI Tue Mareriats oF THE Sonc . ; ’ SD RAS 
1 The Apostolic Hymn Book : : ao te AS 
u The Hymns Quoted in the Epistles . GSAS 
mr St. Paul asa Hymn Writer . ; ; AS Ta, 
1v The Odes of the Apocalypse. ; BH 
LECTURE TWO 
THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO HOLY SCRIPTURE 
I A Question: Arounp WuicH THE WHOLE His- 
Tory oF Hymnopy Turns . . ; ‘ 57 
Il THe New Curistran Hymns _. . : 58 
IJ] Tue Greex SETTLEMENT OF THE QUESTION . 63 
IV Tue Latin SETTLEMENT ; ’ . d 67 
V Tue LurHeran SETTLEMENT. P : 75 


ix 


VII 


Ill 


Contents 


Tue Cazvinistic SETTLEMENT ,, F : 
Docror Watts’? SETTLEMENT 
THE Mopern DisposirioN OF THE QUESTION 


LECTURE THREE 
THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO LITERATURE 


Leo X’s SCHEME oF A CuassicaL Hymnopy . 
Catvin’s PoEtTicaL STANDARD OF PsaLMoDY 
Encuiso PsatMopy APART FROM LITERATURE ° 


Reuicious Lyrics aND THE First EncuishH Hymn 
Boox y : Bayi irty 


Tue Portic Hymnopy oF THE RESTORATION 
Watts’ Divorce or HymMnopy FRoM LITERATURE 
Tue WEsLEYAN Hymns as Poetry 

Tue Unportic EvancericaL Hymnopy 


MontcoMery’s CRITIQUE OF CURRENT Hym- 
wopy: (1823 ),°) Cleese b 


Tue Lyrica, MovEMENT 1N Hymnopy 
Tue Hymn as RELATED To PoETRY 


LECTURE FOUR 


THE CONTENTS OF THE HYMN 


A Hymnopy or PRAIsE . 


A Hymnopy or EpIFicaTIon 
1 The Doctrinal Hymn . 
u The Hymn of the Beier Life cud Its 
Tests 
A CuurcHLY Hpene 
1 The Hymn of the Church Milieont : 
1 The Hymn of the Church Triumphant 
m The Liturgical Hymn ; 


PAGE 


79 
86 


gI 


99 
100 
102 


105 
109 
110 


Ba 
122 


125 
127 
132 


141 
143 
143 


149 
165 
166 
168 
170 








VIII 


Contents 


LECTURE FIVE 
THE TEXT OF THE HYMNS 


Tue Puritan ZEAL FoR “Purity” oF TExtT 
Tue Textuazu Criticism or Our Hymns . 
Tue ConFusinGc STATE OF THE TEXT . 

Tue Causes or THis ConFusION . 

Tue First ATTEMPTS To VERIFY THE rue 


Tue Textuat Canons oF 1895 . 
1 The General Principle of Conformity 
1 The Limits of the Principle of Conformity 
mr The Latest Menace to the icra es Our 
Hymns 


LECTURE SIX 


HYMN SINGING 


Tue Hymn anp THE Hymn TUNE 
Tue Primitive SINGING 
PiainsonG MELODIES 

Tue LUTHERAN CHORALES . 
THE GENEVAN MELopIEs . ‘ 
Tue EncuisH PsaLtm TuNEs . 


AMERICAN SonGc.. 
1 Psalm Tunes in New England 
1 American Hymn Tunes : 
Billings’ Fugueing Tunes . 
Lowell Mason’s Work 
The Parlor Music Type ‘ 
. The Congregational Tune Book ; 
The Tunes of the Oxford Movement 
The Gospel Hymn 
The Later Degeneracy 


THE | CSR Nee AND THE OUTLOOK . ; 


AAR Ro &s 


Xl 


PAGE 
189 
192 
195 
198 
204 
207 
208 
211 


220 


227 
232 
236 
240 


243 
246 
252 
252 
254 
255 
256 
258 
260 
262 
265 
268 
270 





LECTURE ONE 
THE APOSTOLIC IDEAL OF HYMNODY 


\ ae “A ‘ [tai 
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A iG wh . 

CMD 














LECTURE ONE 
THE APOSTOLIC IDEAL OF HYMNODY 


I begin with a simple expression of satisfaction; 
not so much that the reverend Faculty have again 
recognized Hymnology as a subject worthy of a 
hearing, as that they have once more made a place 
for it in a lectureship confined by its founder to 
“topics kindred to theological studies.” They con- 
firm its title to a place in the crowded ranks of 
theological disciplines that make for the preparation 
of the ministry of the gospel. 

To this word of appreciation I should like to add 
a few more in regard to the study of Hymnology 
itself and to the marks of that kinship with theo- 
logical studies. 


There is to-day no complaint more general from 
those who still care for the services of God’s House 
than that against the way in which the interests of 
the people are disregarded in the administration of 
church song. In liturgical Churches the complaint 
is that the participation of the congregation is be- 
coming more difficult and often impracticable. In 
“non-liturgical” Churches the complaint is that the 
pastors treat congregational song as perfunctory and 
negligible; to be disposed of by following the lines 
of least resistance; or else that they use it in a way 

15 


16 Christian Hymnody 


that makes it simply a reénforcement or extension of 
the voice of the preacher rather than an opportunity 
for the people to express the things God puts into 
their hearts. And who could withhold some sym- 
pathy from these long-suffering complainants? 

Naturally their criticisms go beyond the pastor 
to the theological school that turned him out. They 
express a conviction that however he may have been 
equipped for the ministry of the Word, he was not 
properly trained to administer the Hymnody. My 
own opinion is that in this matter (and the present 
occasion confirms it) our seminaries are feeling their 
way. There are at all events some things to be sug- 
gested looking toward a suspension of judgment. 

We all know what a problem the curriculum of a 
theological school has become, and the multitude of 
studies clamoring for recognition. Hymnology is 
one of the latest of these claimants, and weakened 
its claim by starting among ourselves on a wrong 
turn. 

Hymnology was made in Germany, the father- 
land of the modern hymn. English-speaking Prot- 
estantism turned its back on Lutheran songs. It re- 
verted to the inspired Psalm as the only authorized 
“subject-matter of praise.’ And the correlated 
study was Exegetics. When the singing of “human 
composures” had become familiar, “Hymnology” 
meant simply the body of hymns collectively. I 
cannot satisfy myself that the word was used in its 
proper sense of the study of them until the nine- 











The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 17 


teenth century was growing old. Lord Selborne’s 
famous article, “Hymns,” in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica of 1881 fought shy of it. Dr. Julian’s 
Dictionary of Hymnology (1892) first made the 
name familiar and first covered the subject. 

An interest in hymns had awakened before that. 
But it was disposed to treat them as “Sacred 
Poetry,’ as a minor department of English litera- 
ture, which, when not conspicuous for charm, was 
retrieved by moral values. It was a wrong start; 
not so much because of the pious assumption that 
the hymn was to be included within the domain of 
poetry as because any dealings with it as “mere 
literature” dissevered it from its motive, its environ- 
ment and its function; thus making it a sort of lit- 
erary bric-a-brac. That accounts for the nervous 
irritation, not to say the spirit of derision, in which 
our hymns have been ever since regarded by literary 
critics. Perhaps it may make the more modest claim 
of the newer Hymnology to a kinship with theolog- 
ical studies seem less of a venture than a counsel of 
prudence. 


I. THe Hymn 
1. In Its Relation to Theology 


The kinship of these studies becomes more dis- 
cernable and more suggestive if we trace it along 
the tripled lines on which our hymns exercise their 
religious functions. 


18 Christian Hymnody 


(a) They are a singularly effective medium of 
Christian doctrine,—as a container of doctrine and 
as a circulating medium, but, back of all that, as a 
means to the spiritual apprehension of truth and its 
expression devotionally. 

The theologian and the hymn writer traverse day 
by day the same country, the Kingdom of our Lord. 
They walk the same paths; they see the same ob- 
jects; but in their methods of observation and their 
reports of what they see they differ. So far as The- 
ology is a science the theologian deals simply with 
the topography of the country: he explores, he 
measures, he expounds. So far as hymn writing is 
an art the writer deals not with the topography but 
with the landscape: he sees, he feels, and he sings. 
The difference in method is made inevitable by the 
variance of temperament of the two men, the di- 
versity of gifts. But both methods are as valid as 
inevitable. Neither man is sufficient in himself 
either as an observer or a reporter. It is the topog- 
raphy and the landscape together that make the 
country what it is. It is didactics and poetry to- 
gether that can approach the reality of the spiritual 
kingdom. 

Poetry is always an illumination, and sometimes 
an actual discovery, of truth through imagina- 
tion and feeling. And for mystical aspects of 
truth poetry and music afford the only avail- 
able expression. We all feel that with some 
Scripture Psalms and some great hymns we take in 





The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 19 


more truth than we could shape didactically. May- 
be it is only light and color, but it zs illumination. 
He would be a dry-as-dust theologian who shrank 
from using Psalm or hymn in explication of his 
themes. It is more important to remember that in 
the mind of the plain everyday Christian, where 
feeling conditions reflection so strongly, the hymns 
he uses devotionally, and especially those he loves, 
do more to form his religious thinking than anything 
else except the Bible. 

For doctrine, then, the hymn book takes its place 
beside the catechism. And Hymnology thus supple- 
ments Catechetics. 


(b) Hymns are equally effective as helps to- 
ward Christian living. 

To bring the inspirations of poetry to bear upon 
the religious life is the Church’s unending task. The 
most natural solution is to provide a collection of 
lyrics of life and duty, and to keep it fresh and 
appealing by revisions as circumstance and feeling 
change. This the Jewish Church did in her Psalter, 
and this most of the Christian communions try to do, 
whether by modernizing that Psalter or by provid- 
ing hymns of their own. That is to say the Church 
puts in her people’s hands two books: the canon of 
Scripture as the revelation of the spiritual view of 
life, and a canon of hymnody as a manual of the 
spiritual life. 

The hymnal thus ranks as “a means of grace,” 


20 Christian Hymnody 


and Hymnology becomes “kindred to theological 
studies.” The content of the two canons must ac- 
cord. The searchlights of Christian Ethic must play 
upon the hymnody. Poetic sentiment must submit 
to the restraints of a sound Christian Psychology. 


(c) Hymns are the most effective medium for 
the people’s participation in public worship. 

And when their singing becomes a recognized 
part of worship Hymnology becomes a branch of 
Liturgics. 

Liturgics is the study of the philosophy, the his- 
tory and administration of public worship. The 
chairs in many theological schools seem to have been 
named in a spirit of excluding Liturgics from Re- 
formed Theology. If so the protest was quite vain. 
Theology deals with the knowledge of God: Li- 
turgics is the application of that knowledge to His 
worship. “God isa spirit’ is theology. ‘“They that 
worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth” 
is liturgics,—the heart of it. This division of 
Churches into “liturgical” and “non-liturgical’’ is 
easily misapprehended. There is no such thing as 
a non-liturgical Church other than one in which a 
prescribed formula of worship is not imposed by 
authority. I always feel at Friends’ Meeting that 
the very restraints constitute a form of worship, and 
that the unwritten rubrics are distinctly liturgical. 

Zwingli, as we all know, tried to persuade the 
Reformed Church that preaching and hearing ser- 
mons was the only worship. In our own commun- 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 21 


ion at least all such misapprehensions and even the 
later Puritan exaltation of preaching over worship 
are repudiated in the Church constitution, which 
declares: 

“As one primary design of public ordinances is to 
pay social acts of homage to the most high God, 
ministers ought to be careful not to make their ser- 
mons so long as to interfere with or exclude the more 
important duties of prayer and praise” (Dérectory 
for Worship, VU, vii). 

Church song finds place here among the acts of so- 
cial homage more important than sermons rather 
than as an appendage to them. Hymnology there- 
fore relates itself to Theology through Liturgics and 
not Homiletics. 

The distinction is important in two directions. 
First, in its compelling insistence upon bringing the 
church hymnal four square to the church constitu- 
tion. It seems obvious that any communion which 
discards the homiletical ideal of worship is bound to 
provide its congregations with a hymnal that shall 
be a service-book rather than a cyclopedia of re- 
ligious verse codrdinated by an “Index of Scripture 
texts.” 

The distinction bears also upon theological edu- 
cation. It suggests that the training in Hymnology 
already referred to should be along the lines of a 
preparation for the liturgical use of church hym- 
nody, apart from sermon illustration. It is no doubt 
a line that to many an eager heart, thrilled by the 


22 Christian Hymnody 


call to preach the gospel, will seem to be a theolog- 
ical discipline in the most onerous sense. 


2. In Comparative Religion 


It is quite time to put the question—What is a 
hymn? If you looked it up in Webster, the Century, 
the Standard, and in the disappointingly meager 
offering of the great Oxford Dictionary, you would, 
I think, find it puzzling to strike a common denomi- 
nator. Most of us by now are accustomed to regard 
as hymns the songs to Pagan divinities used in ritual. 
But hymnody has had recently a new development 
by the band of scholars codperating in The Diction- 
ary of Religion and Ethics under Dr. Hastings’ un- 
daunted lead. The opening article of its seventh 
volume gathers into 116 columns, under the com- 
pendious title of “Hymns,” the best account in 
English of what we used to call “The sacred poetry 
of early religions,” "Babylonian, Vedic, Egyptian, 
Greek, Celtic, etc., as well as Jewish and Christian. 
But, says one of the writers, we shall have to ex- 
tend our “use of the word ‘hymn’ to include some 
more or less philosophical poems” and also the versi- 
fied spells or charms against hostile powers used on 
the lower or magical side of religion. 

Whether this extension brings gain or confusion 
will be decided differently. Most likely the label 
so affixed in an influential quarter will stick. And 
there are enough materials gathered there to indi- 





The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 23 


cate a new study—Comparative Hymnology. We 
shall have to revise our nomenclature accordingly 
and accept the designation of “Christian Hymnol- 
ogy” for what concerns us here and now. Christian 
Hymnology was indeed the precise title given in 
1870 by Dean Murray of Princeton to his little book 
on hymns. But by “Christian” he meant only to 
mark them off from Jewish Psalms, and by “Hym- 
nology” he no doubt meant Hymnody. 


3. In Its Christian Definition 


What is the Christian hymn, of which we speak so 
familiarly; and manage to get ourselves understood, 
after a fashion? 

In the Septuagint “humnos” applies to Psalms 
voicing Israel’s praise. But in the New Testament 
St. Paul twice refers to “hymns” in a way to dis- 
tinguish them from Psalms—‘“‘Psalms and hymns.” 
St. Augustine,” who was captivated by the new 
metrical strains of Ambrose, limits the word to 
“songs with praise to God.” ‘Without praise,” he 
claims, “they are not hymns,” and “if they praise 
aught beside God,” they are not. 

Augustine’s became the recognized church defini- 
tion. But is it not a bit dogmatic? Are all the 
Psalms pure praise? And from Homer and Hesiod 
down “humnos” had applied to songs or odes ad- 
dressed to other gods and to heroes. Our English 
poets by common consent have followed the classical 


24. Christian Hymnody 


and not the church tradition; from Spenser’s earlier 
“Hymne in honour of Love” to Shelley’s “Hymn to 
Intellectual Beauty” and Swinburne’s “Hymn to 
Proserpina.” Even our irreproachable Longfellow 
has his ‘“Hymn to the Night.” 

Even modern Christian practice itself shows no 
agreement as to what makes a hymn. 

When we speak of the hymns of the Greek 
Church, most of us have in mind the metrical ver- 
sions Neale and Brownlie have prepared for congre- 
gational use. But the originals are in prose, not 
verse. They are set into the texts of the various 
offices, often so interlaced with Psalm or gospel or 
homily that only an expert can unravel the tangle. 
And they are not sung by the congregation or put 
into their hands, but reserved for the officiants alone. 

In the Roman Catholic Church, “Hymns” are the 
versified devotions inserted in the prose Psalms of 
the Daily Office, as distinguished from the “Se- 
quences’’ of the Mass. They are not vernacular but 
Latin. They are not sung by the people, and out- 
side of monasteries it is enough that the priests read 
them in silence. Nowadays that communion has 
also its own popular hymns for certain uses and 
occasions. 

In the Anglican Church the makers of the Prayer 
Book called the prose ““Te Deum” and “‘Benedictus” 
hymns, but not so the L. M. and C. M. versions of 
“Veni Creator.” The editors of successive editions 
seem on the whole to have thought of a hymn as a 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 25 


prose canticle taken from the New Testament in 
contrast with an Old Testament Psalm. 

In early American Presbyterianism “hymn” was a 
term of adventure or reproach. It covered verses of 
human manufacture offered to take the place of in- 
spired Psalms. To our separated Presbyterian 
brethren that meaning and that reproach still linger 
in the word. 


In fact all these varied applications still linger in 
the word. And if we are to discuss hymns rationally 
we must remember them all. The only feature com- 
mon throughout seems to be the intent of use in 
worship. A Christian hymn therefore is a form of 
words appropriate to be sung or chanted in public 
devotions. Almost every Protestant hymn book con- 
tains the prose “Te Deum,” ill-adapted as it is to 
congregational singing, and some prose Psalms and 
canticles set to chants. At the same time an im- 
mense preponderance of metrical compositions, di- 
vided into stanzas that a congregation can sing by 
repeating the tune to each one, shows that such in the 
main is the present-day Protestant conception of 
the word “hymn.” 

And that is perhaps all we can do in the way of 
defining the word in our Christian usage. 


II. Tuer InaucuraTION OF CHRISTIAN SONG 


In the studies of Christian Hymnody we are now 
to make, what I have really at heart are its present- 


26 Christian Hymnody 


day interests rather than those of antiquarianism. 
None the less we shall have to proceed by the his- 
torical method,—a length-wise approach by the way 
things happened rather than a cross-country sketch 
of the way things are. Such is the common lot of 
all students of human institutions. For man is an 
old resident, and all that he is and has is mediated 
through the past. 

In the study of a church ordinance the historical 
method is imperative. We must first seek its roots 
in New Testament times and trace its continuity 
through church history before we can frame a work- 
ing theory for its proper administration. 

Here and now, for example. Is there a Christian 
ordinance which we may call Holy Song, with 
Christ’s authority behind it? And if so, on what 
terms did the Apostolic Church receive it and prac- 
tice it? What features were present from the be- 
ginning, and must therefore be regarded as essential 
to its being? And, among the features of its later 
church practice, which are to be regarded as de- 
velopments contributing to its well-being and which 
as mere accretions and perhaps hindrances? When 
we have answered these questions, and only so, it 
seems to me, we have our working theory of church 
song. 


The contribution which even a superficial study of 
Comparative Hymnology makes to the study of 
origins is in relieving us of any necessity to discuss a 





The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 27 


theoretical relation of music and religion. It shows 
us that relation as already a condition and not a 
theory in early religions. It reveals the actual 
employ of hymns in ritual and life from a time 
earlier than all written records. It shows especially 
a relatively high development of worship-music 
and poetry in one of those national religions, the 
Hebrew, and how in the divine providence that 
Jewish Psalmody became the inheritance of the 
Christian Church, passing into it directly and un- 
questioned. 


The actual point of transition is found at the in- 
stitution of the Lord’s Supper. The simple record 
in its Englished form, “And when they had sung an 
hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives,” has 
always touched the Christian heart. For our present 
occasion its significance lies in revealing Christ as 
Himself the inaugurator of our church song and in 
His connecting it with the most characteristic fea- 
ture of Christian worship—the Holy Communion. 

This post-Communion hymn was ritual song, and 
must have been so sensed by the disciples. Thus it 
became at once not only the precedent but the spring 
of our church song, which in all the main streams 
that have started from it continues to be ritual song. 
But (the occasion being what it was) the precedent 
is just as valid, if one were needed, for the social 
simplicities of hymnody, the worship-song of a 
household, the friendly song of a brotherhood. 


28 Christian Hymnody 


If we ask the manner of singing at the Supper, it 
was common song in the sense that all joined in, 
but antiphonal, or more likely responsive, in actual 
delivery. Would the disciples wait for the Master 
to begin? Or was there some one with special apt- 
ness to start the song? 

If we put the question of our Western poet, 
“What song sang the twelve with the Saviour ?”— 
the rapt and isolated song of spiritual possession was 
so soon to interrupt the common song, that I suppose 
the thought has come to most of us that in the stress 
of the occasion the parting song might have been an 
inspirational hymn of the Master, with some familiar 
response by the disciples. Such a thought came cer- 
tainly to the author of the Acta Johannis, who pic- 
tures the little group standing hand in hand, and 
even gives the words of the hymn.* He may have 
crystallized some rumor or tradition, or may have 
drawn at first hand upon a seemingly ample reserve 
of mendacity. 

The record does not identify the hymn and the 
verb used does not point in any particular direction. 
It is a part of the case of our brethren who would 
for all time confine church praise to Old Testament 
Psalms that our Lord gave out one of them, estab- 
lishing a precedent and implying a prescription. If 
so the Evangelists seem to have been very much at 
fault not to have told us. 

And yet the company must have sung something 
familiar, and what so familiar as the Psalms? And 





The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 29 


as the Master began by adhering to the Passover 
ritual, what so natural as to conclude with the sec- 
ond part of the Hallel, appointed as a thanksgiving 
for the fourth cup? Most scholars agree that He 
did so.* Professor Bickell, who thinks the Hallel 
was concluded before the Communion, argues for 
the fresh selection of some appropriate Psalm, the 
23rd preferably: ° a suggestion that at all events 
makes a sentimental appeal. 


The Presbyterian Communion service, when prop- 
erly set and administered, is unique in being a dra- 
matic portrayal of the original occasion. Such was 
its intent, and so much of the record is quoted as to 
make it surprising that the post-Communion hymn 
was not dealt with more suggestively. Knox’s Book 
of Common Order provided that “‘the action being 
ended, the people sing the 103rd Psalm, or some 
other of thanksgiving’; but the Westminster D?- 
rectory for Worship omitted this rubric altogether. 
Our American Directory, however, provides, a bit 
casually: “(Now let a psalm or hymn be sung, and 
the congregation dismissed.” 


III. Curistran Sonc IN THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN 
CHURCH 


Both precedents, the feast and the Psalm, were 
followed by the brethren at Jerusalem; who “break- 
ing bread from house to house, did eat their meat 


30 Christian Hymnody 


with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God” 
(Acts ii, 46, 47). They had been accustomed to use 
the Psalms devotionally all their lives, and under the 
new circumstances would continue to use them with 
quickened feelings. St. Peter’s sermon shows how 
the Master had trained them to read new meanings 
into the hallowed words. 

These first Christians are described as in that state 
of spiritual elation out of which song springs as 
naturally as flowers blossom. And plainly they felt 
perfectly free to add new songs to the old, which the 
more gifted among them did from the beginning. 

St. Luke gathers up three of these Jewish-Chris- 
tian Psalms into his gospel of the Infancy, the 
“Magnificat,” the “Benedictus,’ and the “Nunc 
Dimittis.”” So Jewish that, as Dr. Warfield said,° to 
have met the Magnificat in the midst of the Psalter 
would have occasioned no suspicion: so Christian 
that they still form a part of the daily office of the 
Church. In view of which fact Dean Farrar has 
ventured to confer upon the anthologist the fanciful 
title of “the first hymnologist.” * 

Where did St. Luke get these lyrics? The sug- 
gestion that he found them in the Church’s hymn 
book has nothing against it except a lack of evidence 
of any such employment before the fifth century. 
On the other hand the suggestion that Jewish Chris- 
tians did not feel as free to sing as to make such new 
songs is against the probabilities of the situation. It 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 31 


is an intrusion of presumptions to support a theory 
that the Church inherited the Psalter as a sealed 
hymn book under a perpetual Act of Uniformity. 

To most students that early atmosphere seems to 
embody a spirituality of the creative sort, of expan- 
sion rather than compulsory restriction. It appears 
to have been a divine providence rather than a di- 
vine prescription that laid the Psalter ready to the 
Church’s hand, and as though its contents rather 
than the urgency of its rubrics recommended its use 
to the first Christians. 

The only example of a Jewish-Christian Psalm in 
actual employ is in Acts iv, where the company “‘lift 
up their voice to God with one accord” in words be- 
ginning “O Lord, Thou art God, which hast made 
heaven and earth, and the sea.” It shows a freedom 
in dealing with ancient formularies of prayer and 
praise. 

The group in St. Luke more fully illustrates the 
earliest stage of the new Psalm making. Its struc- 
ture closely following the Psalter model; its sub- 
stance reminiscent of Psalm and prophecy; its cri- 
terion the clear note of Messianic fulfillment. It 
was a gospel appendix to the Davidic Psalter. 


The thing most characteristic of this primitive 
Christian song, so memorable as to color the record, 
is the gladness of the singers’ hearts, the predom- 
inance of praise. It was natural that both of our 


32 Christian Hymnody 


poets who celebrated the hymn at the Last Supper, 
emphasized its pathos. It was ‘a mournful song,” 
John Pierpont says; 


“And sad, I should say, as the winds are, 
That blow by the white gravestones.” 


adds Joaquin Miller. If this were so it is important 
to remember that the sadness belonged to the human 
as distinguished from the spiritual side of Christian 
song as there inaugurated. Nor was it in the words 
sung. It came from the foreshadow of the Master’s 
impending absence on human hearts, their failure of 
faith to foresee His abiding presence. And when 
they came more fully under the influence of His 
Spirit their song lost forever its human plaintiveness 
and bubbled over with joy and gladness, with “‘prais- 
ing God” first of all and with the happiness of 
fellowship in and with Christ. 

I infer, then, that this note of gladness is the spe- 
cial offering of Jewish-Christian song toward our 
theory of hymnody, whether as an essential thing 
necessary to its being or as a characteristic thing 
necessary to its well-being. I infer that our own 
hymns, in so far as they are fully spiritual, are cheer- 
ful and not sad, “‘joyful in the Lord” ; that the plain- 
tive and sobbing verse, the complaints and anxieties 
in which our hymnals are so rich, and most of all 
the obsession of so many of our songs with the fore- 
shadowing of death, are not in reality nearly so 
spiritual as we have supposed them to be. They are 
voices of questionings and doubts that come from 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 33 


the outward show of things and the lack of health 
within combining to obscure from the singers’ eyes 
the reality and joy of the perpetual Presence. 


IV. CuristTIAN SONG IN THE GENTILE CHURCHES 


1. The Liberty of Christian Praise 


So far as we can picture the development of 
Christian song:in the churches St. Paul founded, it 
was at first a rivulet flowing in the old channels of 
Jewish psalmody; then swelling into a flood that 
for a while leaped the banks and hid the original 
stream, through the outpouring of heavenly gifts of 
inspirational song; which, subsiding, left an en- 
riched but perhaps unquiet stream to flow in the 
steady course of a recognized church ordinance. 


The Jews scattered through the Empire served as 
a nucleus for mission churches. The general famil- 
iarity with “common Greek,” and the circulation of 
the Septuagint with its Psalter, and of any Jewish- 
Christian Psalms that were available, furnished an 
equipment for common praise of the familiar sort. 

So much is obvious. But it omits the Gentile con- 
verts. However loyally they received the Psalter 
from the hands of their Jewish brethren, can we 
doubt that their incoming inevitably led to what the 
Scots used to call “Some enlargement of the Psalm- 
ody.” Allow for the mystical law of human nature 
that impels exalted feeling to rhythmical expres- 


34. Christian Hymnody 


sion, for the fervor of the Oriental temperament, the 

joy of the uplift from Pagan darkness into Christian 

experience. Remember that the new enthusiasm’ 
centered in Christ’s person, involving an advance, 

from the prophetic Messiah of the Psalter to the 

living Christ of experience, in the song as well as in 

the heart. 

The situation in these primitive little communities 
doubtless finds an analogy in the actual planting of 
Christianity in Oriental mission fields of to-day. 
When the question of restricting sacred song to the 
Psalms was being fought out in the Assembly of the 
Free Church of Scotland in the early eighteen sev- 
enties, none opposed it more warmly than the mis- 
sionaries. One of them, Dr. Wilson, illuminated 
the situation in India: 

“Any violence done to the liberty of Christian 
praise would, if absolute, seriously affect my 
conscience, having to deal with the incipiency of the 
Christian Church among the two hundred millions 
of the inhabitants of India. I could not be a party 
to offending in this matter the little ones—the con- 
verts, who themselves compose and sing their hymns 
to Christ, both publicly and privately.” ® 

Some such native strains may very well have 
broken out in the free and informal assembly in 
Gentile churches; just as in the equally free and ex- 
alted atmosphere of our own early Western revivals, 
ejaculations and snatches of song and rhymed re- 
frains were drawn out in the camp-meetings; some 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 35 


of the more effective passing into the revival song 
books, where they may still be read. In the Gentile 
churches the emotional and artless songs would be 
more ephemeral, overshadowed by the glamor of the 
inspirational songs so soon to flood the assemblies. 


2. The Inspirational Hymn 


We have been reading between the lines. It so 
happened that the development of psalmody St. 
Paul pictured first was not along normal channels, 
but along that of spiritual possession and spiritual 
gifts, which started at Pentecost. These, as re- 
newed in some Gentile churches, produced the ex- 
ceptional inspirational singing just referred to. 

At the date of his description of the agitated 
assembly at Corinth (I Cor. xiv) the consciousness 
of possessing spiritual gifts had spread widely, and 
the impulse to express them was compelling. 

“What happens, brethren? When ye come to- 
gether every one of you hath a psalm, hath a teach- 
ing, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an inter- 
pretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.” 

The Apostle does not deny the reality of the 
gifts. He does not question the impulse. He is a 
chairman amid a confusion of voices, calling the 
meeting to order. How like he is to Jonathan Ed- 
wards trying to regulate the outbreaks of the Great 
Awakening! Finding “something very beautiful” 
“when many under great religious Affections, are 


36 Christian Hymnody 


earnestly speaking together in various Parts of a 
Company,” “provided they don’t speak so many 
as to drown each other’s Voices, that none can hear 
what any say.” ® 

“Every one of you hath a psalm” (or something 
other), the Apostle says in his dismay at the super- 
fluity. The Spirit sowed the seed, and, as the poet 
says, 

“Most can raise the flowers now, 
For all have got the seed.” 

One can see some rapt figure rising to utter a song 
that stirs every heart, and then watch the moved 
hearers hurrying home to try their own hands at 
writing psalms for the next meeting; until the assem- 
blies come to resemble those eighteenth century 
hymn-competitions in the Welsh revival. 

This charismatic psalmody was sometimes a 
speaking with tongues and could never have been 
congregational song. We get an illustration of its 
performance in the extraordinary movement to re- 
vive the “gifts” in Edward Irving’s Regent Square 
congregation in the early eighteen thirties. The 
gifted were under some strong compulsion and sin- 
cerely believed it to be that of God’s Spirit. In any 
case the human reaction would be much the same. 

In exercising the gift their voices attained an un- 
natural intensity and sweetness, their utterance an 
extreme rapidity in words often unintelligible, and 
the unmusical developed a gift of melody. The 
whole personality took on a complete abstraction 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 37 


from time and place. Even an observer might have 
felt himself (some did) back in the Corinth of St. 
Paul.” 

I suppose the inspirational song was called a 
“psalm” because it suggested an Old Testament 
Psalm as a model or a source or may be as empha- 
sizing a community of inspiration. But the logic of 
the situation as well as the context itself requires us 
to hold that the psalm brought to the Corinthian 
assembly was not a canonical one, but a fresh com- 
position, the product in each case of the individual 
gift of the disciple who made it. No inspiration of 
any sort, not even the fine frenzy of a poet, least of 
all a miraculous gift, is required to recite a Scripture 
Psalm at a religious meeting. The contention that 
the new gift of psalmody to the Gentile churches 
brought no more than that seems, to me at least, like 
a failure to interpret a historical occasion. 


In the Corinthian assemblies the gift of psalmody 
was either the best of the charismatic endowments, 
or else the most conspicuous, for St. Paul names it 
first. 

This precedence among God’s gifts in times of 
spiritual revival it has retained ever since:—in the 
Lutheran Reformation at Wittenberg and beyond, in 
the Calvinistic Reformation in Switzerland and 
France, in the Methodist and Evangelical revival in 
England and Wales, and in the Great Awakening 
that swept the American colonies off their feet. At 


38 Christian Hymnody 


the beginning of the Awakening it was the outbreak 
of singing, especially of processions of young people 
singing along roads and streets, that drew out the 
first reproaches from that eminent moderate, Charles 
Chauncey.” Jonathan Edwards, so proud of the 
earlier attainments of his Northampton flock in 
psalmody as to print in a book” the fact that the 
Men carry “regularly and well, three Parts of 
Musick, and the Women a Part by themselves,” 
mentions that at the inception of the revival there in 
1735, ‘Our publick Praéses were then greatly enliv- 
en’d; God was then served in our Psalmody, in some 
measure, in the Beauty of Holiness.” 


3. The Enrichment of the Hymnody 


It is questionable if any spiritual revival ever left 
the songs of a church just where it found them. 

The Hussite movement left behind it the vernac- 
ular hymn and the people’s hymn book; the Luth- 
eran left behind it the German hymnody; the 
Calvinistic left behind it the metrical Psalm; the 
Wesleyan left behind it the evangelistic hymn, and 
shared with the Evangelical side of the revival in 
creating the hymn of Christian experience ; the Great 
Awakening overcame the prejudice against human 
composures and changed the churches that it affected 
from being Psalm singers into hymn-singing 
churches; the Moody and Sankey campaigns left be- 
hind them the “gospel hymn.” 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 39 


What did the early outpouring of heavenly 
“gifts” leave behind it? 

We cannot indicate any actual deposit as we can 
in the case of later revivals. But it would be hard 
to believe that it did not leave behind some enrich- 
ment of the body of the hymnody itself. The high 
esteem felt for the gifts make it inconceivable that 
the favored psalms, those that touched the heart, 
were allowed to lapse into neglect. They would be 
treasured in the memory of some, and might pass 
into the common possession of the Church. I shall 
deal later with a suggestion that the spiritual odes 
St. Paul recommended for singing, a few years after- 
ward, may refer to the ‘‘Spirit-given” psalms surviv- 
ing from the revival. 


V. Str. Paut’s THrory or HymMnopy 


The “gifts” were a passing phenomenon. The 
excitement passed, as it must if life is to go on. 
One and another gift failed, until none was ex- 
hibited. Even Corinth was in the same position 
as those other places in which the church gatherings 
had been maintained steadily but without any con- 
sciousness of spiritual endowments. 

Psalmody had been a gift. It was now to be 
established as a permanent ordinance in the assem- 
blies of the brethren. 

St. Paul’s casual references suggest that the usual 
assemblies were of two sorts: 


40 Christian Hymnody 


(1) His “when ye come together . . . let all 
things be done unto edifying”’ (the passage we have 
been studying) implies an open meeting, free and 
informal, for the edification of Christians and the 
instruction of any brought in from outside. Any 
one is at liberty to offer his contribution: even the 
uninstructed could respond with his “Amen.” (2) 
His “when ye come together to eat,” in I Cor. xi, 33, 
refers to an assembly for the common meal followed 
by the Communion, which must have been restricted 
to the brethren. 


St. Paul’s dealings with the inspirational song had 
been specific enough. Did he have views equally 
definite about the Christian song which is not a 
day’s wonder but our daily food? Did he have a 
theory of church song? 

These questions are answered in two passages in 
which, say about A. D. 60, he concerns himself with 
the subject; Ephesians v, 18-20, and Colossians iii, 
16, 17. They both deal less by way of description 
of what was as in anxiety for what might be. And 
they are thus the Apostolic ideal, and hence our 
charter, of Christian song. 


Take first the passage in Ephesians. 

Were it not for the silence of expositors I should 
have thought it refers cbviously to the hymnody of 
the Love-Feast and Communion: 

“So do not show yourselves senseless (unsensing 


eee ee 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 41 


the difference between a pagan and a Christian feast, — 
not discerning the Lord’s body), but understand 
what ts according to Christ’s appointment. And do 
not get drunk with the wine (as at Corinth). That 
ts excess. But be filled with the Spirit, speaking 
responsively in psalms and hymns and spiritual odes, 
singing vocally with music in your hearts to the 
Lord: giving thanks throughout in the Name of our 
Lord Jesus Christ (as He did at the Supper) to God 
the Father.” 

The “‘submitting yourselves one to another,” that 
follows, is perhaps a rubric in the interests of de- 
cency and order at the feast as a symbol of the 
deeper restraints immediately enjoined. 


So much for St. Paul’s conception of festal and 
Communion song,—its source in the Spirit, its en- 
thusiasm also spiritual as against bodily excitement, 
its note of thanksgiving “always” as its criterion. 

This glad note of thanksgiving rings true to 
Christ’s institution of the Supper, from the blessing 
of the bread and the thanks before the cup to the 
Great Thanksgiving at the end. It passed into the 
Communion as observed in The Teaching of the 
Apostles and into the early Greek liturgies, but 
somehow it dropped out of the Roman Mass. It 
resounded in Calvin’s The Manner of the Lord’s 
Supper, which fairly thrills with gratitude. The 
Communion Office of The Book of Common Prayer 
gives a post-Communion prayer of thanks and shifts 


42 Christian Hymnody 


the “Gloria in excelsis’ from its position in earlier 
liturgies to form a Great Thanksgiving at the close. 

In Knox’s Liturgy the intrusion of a long homily 
and the severe fencing of the Table perhaps quench 
the spirit of thanksgiving in tender hearts, but the 
service closes with the 103rd or some other Psalm 
of thanksgiving. In the Westminster and American 
Directories for Worship the order for the Commun- 
ion is too much given up to rigorous self-examination 
and warning that come too late and mar the occasion. 
Surely we ought to have examined ourselves before 
coming there. But at the end the Minister is “to 
give solemn thanks to God, for His rich mercy and 
invaluable goodness; a tardy but a very lovely 
phrase. 

Perhaps, if Presbyterians had adopted the desig- 
nation of “The Eucharist,” favored by the late Dr. 
Archibald Hodge, the festival character of the sacra- 
ment and the eucharistic quality of its hymnody 
would have been made more prominent. For it is 
a matter of observation that in Churches long fore- 
going the observance of the Christian Year, there 
develops a tendency to make the Communion ser- 
vice a surreptitious observance of Good Friday. 


We turn to the passage in Colossians: 

“Let the word of Christ dwell in your hearts, en- 
riching you in all wisdom; teaching and admonish- 
ing one another with psalms and hymns and spir- 
tual odes, singing with grace in your hearts unto 


———— = 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 43 


God. And whatever ye do,in word or deed, do all in 
the Name of the Lord Jesus, offering thanksgivings 
to God the Father through Him. 


Here again the eucharistic feature of Christian 
song is carefully conserved not only as its essential 
but as the actual spiritual atmosphere which en- 
velops it. But the Apostle feels no inconsistency 
in urging song as a means of mutual edification. He 
is of course not forecasting a service of praise for the 
stately basilicas of Constantine’s time. He is 
merely exhorting a little company of people gath- 
ered in a humble home for mutual edification. And 
yet the sort of singing here indicated becomes none 
the less an authorized form of church song; and 
every theory of hymnody must wrestle with it or 
give it lodgment. 

Some of us recall an older type of divine in our 
pulpits who announced each hymn with the formula, 
“Let us now sing to the praise and glory of Almighty 
God the —th hymn,” and then would perhaps go 
on to read “Hasten, sinner, to be wise.” The 
Apostle is more candid: “Let us admonish one an- 
other with the hymn, 

“*Waken, thou that sleepest, 
Arouse thee from the dead? ” 
that is to say he gives full approval to the Hymn 
of Edification as a form of Christian song. 

Its characteristics are clearly indicated. It is a 

gospel song. A melody first of all in hearts in 


44 Christian Hymnody 


which the word of Christ dwells richly, and then a 
lyrical expression of that inward experience, fitted to 
be a messenger of grace from heart to heart. Its two 
special functions singled out, teaching and admoni- 
tion, are the two happening to be appropriate,—its 
teaching power in view of the Colossian heresy, its 
admonitory power in view of the ethical situation. 


But the feature of Christian song that stands out 
most vividly in this passage is its essential individu- 
alism. We talk of social singing and community 
singing in terms of our collective impression. St. 
Paul seems to see each singer apart, “teaching and 
admonishing one another.” ‘This is because Chris- 
tian song is to him a purely spiritual function, the 
natural expression of a heart filled with the Spirit. 
In his concern that song should flourish among the 
Colossians he did not exhort them to form music 
classes but to deepen the spiritual life. And if our 
Christian song is spiritual, it also must be funda- 
mentally individualistic. 

To this conception of it we shall no doubt have 
to submit our own theories of church song. It is not 
an ordinance that resides in the sanctuary waiting 
till a congregation gather to exercise it. It is a spir- 
itual gift which each Christian brings to the sanc- 
tuary and contributes to a common song of spiritual 
fellowship. 


= 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 45 


VI. Tuer MarTERIALS OF THE SONG 


1. The Apostolic Hymn Book 


We have postponed till now any consideration of 
the poetical materials the Apostle recommended, 
“Psalms and hymns and spiritual odes’: a phrase 
he liked so well that, having used it in one letter, he 
repeated it in the other with the precision of a 
formula. 

“We cannot for a moment,” Dr. McPherson 
warns us, “suppose that there is any suggestion of a 
collection of pieces for use in the public gatherings 
of Christians.” ** 

But what could such a collocation of words mean 
to humble Christians who were not philologists un- 
less they had at hand something corresponding to it, 
something by way of a repertory of psalms, hymns 
and odes? Moreover the Epistle to Colosse was 
written to undermine the influence of certain teach- 
ers there, once regarded as Gnostics, but whom the 
latest scholarship supposes to be Judaizers. The 
Apostle proposes supplementary songs because of 
their teaching and admonitory power to meet the 
situation. But what songs? Songs are quite as 
effective to incite immorality as high living; and 
good carriers of heresy as well as orthodoxy. Had 
this urgent protagonist of singing really neglected 
to provide these ignorant people with hymns of the 
right sort? 


46 Christian Hymnody 


What would a repertory of such contain? A 
variety, evidently—psalms, hymns and spiritual 
odes. Psalms from the Septuagint, one would say, 
although on the only other occasion on which St. 
Paul mentioned “a psalm,” it was one of the new 
compositions brought into the assembly at Corinth. 
Some of these must have survived. Then there were 
Jewish-Christian psalms, if only the three preserved 
yet by St. Luke. As for hymns,—in so far as 
St. Paul thought in Greek, he would have in mind 
songs of direct praise to a God or hero, and would 
refer here to such “hymns offered to Christ as unto a 
God” as Pliny’s witness heard in Bithynia some- 
what later. What the Apostle meant by Spiritual 
odes we know well enough. And it matters little 
whether we translate his phrase as Spirit-given 
songs, or songs composed by Spiritual men, or songs 
of the Spiritual life, so long as we capitalize the “S.” 

There was thus a situation that clearly called for 
a collection of authorized songs, and already a wide 
range and a considerable variety in the available 
materials. 


It has not been so long since the suggestion of an 
apostolic hymn book seemed to Dr. McPherson an 
idle hypothesis, and to others a fabrication to sup- 
port some theory of liturgical progress in the first 
century. But we know now that the production and 
circulation of documents was more facile than we 
had supposed. 


: 








The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 47 


An unforeseen turn to the question was given in 
1909 when Dr. Rendel Harris announced the discov- 
ery of “An early Christian hymn book.” It is a col- 
lection of “private psalms,” originally Greek, con- 
tained in a fifteenth or sixteenth century Syriac MS., 
bound in with the pre-Christian Psalms of Solomon 
and entitled The Odes of Solomon. In this connec- 
tion our prepossessions count for no more than in the 
case of the Dédache, whose discovery proved vexing 
to many liturgical theorists. And most of us are 
in the hands of the few specialists accustomed to 
handle similar documents and who have proved their 
right to draw conclusions from them. 

Mrs. Gibson, who has proved hers so abundantly, 
ventures a hypothesis that makes the Odes earlier 
than Ephesians, and might imply their actual iden- 
tity with the “odes” of that epistle.** Dr. Harris 
himself had dated them as of the last quarter of the 
first century; and, after all criticisms are in, main- 
tains that they fall scarcely, if at all, outside the lim- 
its of New Testament composition.” Harnack 
dates them at the end of the first century. 

That the Odes are Christian, originally or as 
worked over from a Jewish text, seems obvious, with 
so many allusions to articles of the faith and the 
clear note of joy in Christ’s salvation. But it seems 
a detached Christianity, proceeding at a high eleva- 
tion by the mystic way, yet not without some rela- 
tion to the type of thought St. John made apostolic. 

The unfailing “Hallelujah!” in every ode con- 


48 Christian Hymnody 


notes a song book. The whole situation suggests 
the probability, or, if preferred, the possibility, that 
we are at last in actual possession of a hymn book 
of apostolic times. It seems like a materialization 
in our hands of the stuff that dreams were made on. 

As to what phase of Christianity the Odes repre- 
sent, by what party within the Church or at its bor- 
ders the hymns were used, there is not now and 
perhaps never will be full agreement. To the mys- 
tically inclined they will seem Catholic, and to the 
sacramentally inclined as sadly lacking in the rudi- 
ments. What St. Paul would think of them we can 
only imagine. We have no warrant certainly to 
assume that these mystical hymns represent the nor- 
mal content of an apostolic hymn book, or that they 
fulfill the type of psalm and ode with whose power 
to teach the truth and confirm the right St. Paul was 
so deeply impressed. 


2. The Hymns Quoted in the Epistles 


In that respect we can find firmer ground in his 
own letters. 

Narrowing our survey at first to poetical quota- 
tions whose source is unnamed, three especially 
sound as if they might have come from the apostolic 
hymn book. 

(a) In Ephesians vy, 14, there is a quotation 
whose very /ocws is suggestive, for it immediately 
precedes the injunction to sing hymns and odes. 





The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 49 
“Wherefore one says: 


“Thou that sleepest, waken! 
Rouse thee out of death, 
That Christ may be thy Light!” 


The context, the words and the best opinion, at 
least as far back as Origen, favor regarding this as a 
quotation of a current hymn; part of a baptismal 
hymn, it may be. 

(b) In I Timothy iii, 16: 

[Who was] “Manifest in flesh, 
Justified in spirit, 
Visible to angels; 
Preached among the nations, 


Believed on in the world, 
Taken up to glory.” 


A quotation whose context would supply the 
grammatical subject. Manifestly poetry, with its 
parallelism of six balanced clauses, of which each 
triplet forms a climax; and if a quotation of Chris- 
tian verse, what indeed, if not a hymn? 

(c) In II Timothy ii, 11-13: “Faithful is the say- 
ing, 

* “Tf we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him: 

If we endure with Hin, we shall also reign with Him; 

If we deny Him, He too will deny us; 


If we are faithless, He abideth faithful; 
Since He cannot deny Himself.’ ” 


Here we have the same parallelism, an arrange- 
ment in couplet and refrain, and an introduction 
suggesting a familiar quotation. 


50 Christian Hymnody 


3. St. Paul as a Hymn Writer 


But I think we may go further. We have not 
made enough of St. Paul’s declaration, “I will sing 
praise with the Spirit and with the understanding 
also” (I Cor. xiv, 15), as expressing what it must 
mean in its immediate context, his consciousness of 
possessing a gift for hymn writing and his intention 
to exercise it. 

And I venture to give my personal reaction to 
the Pauline letters, accompanied by the confession 
that it is not evidence. 

They leave an impression of one whose high- 
strung temperament and exalted mood dwelt habitu- 


ally in that atmosphere of light and color with which, 


a spiritual imagination clothes experience. And of 
one also whose turn for rhetorical expression, half- 
unconsciously even, transmuted his thoughts and 
feelings into rhythmical phrases and nicely balanced 
formularies; staying with him, as such things will, 
the familiar possession of his mind, pulses of melody 
in his heart. We see just the same thing in Horatius 
Bonar, except that Bonar’s obsession with the 
Church as the widowed bride of an absent Christ 
makes his hymns pathetic while the apostle’s joy in 
the Church as the body of an indwelling Christ 
makes his eucharistic. 

And I think that is why St. Paul’s letters break 
forth so frequently yet so unexpectedly, so liturgi- 
cally and yet so spontaneously, into rhythmical 


—— 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 51 


ascriptions and doxologies. They contain also more 
extended passages whose exalted rhetoric has a song- 
like effect that may well be an echo of his own 
hymns. Who will say that the opening of Ephesians 
itself, “Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ,” with its careful craftmanship and its 
thrice-sounded refrain, “Unto the praise of His 
glory,” is not an actual transcript of one of his own 
hymns? 

The so-called Hymn of Love that fills I Co- 
rinthians xiii is no hymn in the congregational sense. 
It is the more striking for being inserted in the 
middle of the discussion of the spiritual gifts. Dean 
Stanley pictures the amanuensis pausing to look up 
at the apostle’s face for an explanation of his sudden 
change of style as he begins to dictate his vision of 
perfection. The lyric personalities with which the 
passage opens and closes make it quite as easy to 
picture the Apostle as having risen in some assembly 
with a seer’s vision and utterance to speak the words, 
here made a part of the record, as an inspirational 
psalm, in the Spirit and with the understanding also 
of heavenly love. In any case it is evidence enough 


of St. Paul’s gift of psalmody. 


4. The Odes of the Apocalypse 


The Apocalypse also contains a considerable num- 
ber of short odes, some of which are plainly a part 
of the definite prophecies they are connected with. 


52 Christian Hymnody 


But there is in the chapters introductory to the 
vision (iv-x) a group of songs of a more general 
character of praise to God and the Lamb. Weiz- 
sacher was, I believe, the first to suggest that these 
earlier odes may be no more than transcripts of tradi- 
tional hymns originally employed in the current wor- 
ship of the Church on earth, and has shown im- 
pressively how the brief songs of chapters iv and v 
fit into one another like strophes of a complete ode.** 
This view has found so great favor that it has now 
reached the encylopedic stage,—by which I mean 
that we may open our cyclopedias at the word 
“Hymn,” expecting to find these odes recorded 
among the remains of apostolic hymnody. 

Weizsiacher’s suggestion grew out of his convic- 
tion that the delineation of divine service in heaven 
followed the actual proceedings in the Church on 
earth: by which he means that the actual order of 
worship in the assemblies was the framework on 
which the author of the Apocalypse hung the rich 
tapestries depicting the worship of heaven. 

It may be so. But as soon as you attempt to work 
out the details of the analogy between the heavenly 
worship and the simple devotions of the assemblies, 
as Mr. Lowrie has done,”’ you pass with him into an 
atmosphere more liturgically developed than the one 
portrayed by the actual records of the first century. 

And in the case of the hymns themselves. Our 
earthly songs do not seem to fit naturally into the 
pattern of the tapestry. Would it not have been 


The Apostolic Ideal of Hymnody 53 


as inept then as now to represent the elders and the 
cherubim gathered at the throne as singing the 
strains of our familiar lyrics? It is of course 
possible that the Church cherished a group of charis- 
matic songs so high and so sacrosanct that they 
would seem at home in heaven. But to my feeling at 
least there is some quality or atmosphere about these 
odes of the Apocalypse that lifts them above the 
humanities and suggests a birthright in the heaven- 
lies. They do not sound like songs of worship trans- 
mitted from an earthly atmosphere so much as like 
songs of those who look back or down upon the na- 
tions and the Church, and are now enclosed within 
the vision of God. 

Some such instinctive feeling as that just sug- 
gested may account for the marked hesitancy of the 
Church through all the centuries to incorporate these 
odes of the Apocalypse in her liturgies or to include 
them among her congregational songs. She has 
probably felt that they are songs of triumph and 
not visions out of struggle, the triumph of attain- 
ment rather than of faith. 

And so, for ourselves also, with no other evidence 
than the contents of the apocalyptic odes themselves, 
it may be prudent to regard them as idealizations of 
the Church’s praise, or prophetic suggestions of what 
it shall be, rather than as transcripts from the apos- 
tolic hymn book. 





LECTURE TWO 


THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO HOLY 
SCRIPTURE 





LECTURE TWO 


THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO HOLY 
SCRIPTURE 


I. A Question: ARounp WuicH THE WHOLE 
History oF Hymnopy Turns 


In the first lecture I tried to show from the evi- 
dence that St. Paul authorized a freely composed 
Christian hymnody and encouraged the churches 
under his influence to use it as an enlargement of the 
ordinance of Psalmody. 

To suppose that his proposals were welcomed by 
the Jewish Christian church at Jerusalem; to claim 
that St. James, in prescribing psalmody for the 
merry-hearted, included hymns and odes; to deny 
that St. Paul’s views were fought tooth and nail by 
the Judaizers in provincial churches; to claim that 
before the end of the apostolic epoch the whole 
Church was changed from a Psalm-singing to a 
hymn-singing church: not any one of these assump- 
tions was a part of our case. 

On the contrary the present lecture assumes that 
St. Paul precipitated an issue: Psalms vs. Hymns, 
and that it divided the opinion and practice of the 
Church. Has the Church a right to supersede or 


even enlarge the hymn book that is of canonical au- 
57 


58 Christian Hymnody 


thority? Is it not audacious to supplement inspired 
Psalms with hand-made hymns? And even if it be 
lawful is it expedient? That is the issue. 

To many of us this question of the relation of our 
Christian song to Scriptural song has not given much 
concern, and to others it will seem as in no sense a 
modern question. 

The purpose of this lecture is to show that through 
each succeeding period of the Church’s life this ques- 
tion has always remained a modern question, a case 
of conscience, a center of agitation; that for cen- 
turies after the Reformation a difference of opinion 
regarding the answer kept the Lutheran and Re- 
formed Churches from worshiping together; that in 
the early days of American Presbyterianism it led to 
bitterness and division that were heart-breaking ; and 
that it is still enough of a modern question to pre- 
vent our divided Presbyterianism not only from cor- 
porate union but from joining together in a hymn 
to Christ. 

The scheme of this lecture is to discover the an- 
swers to the question the Church has given from time 
to time, or, in other words, to follow the fortunes 
of the Christian Hymn; for the two themes are 
identical. 


Il. Tue New Curistian Hymns 


It is probable that the histories of early Christian 
worship that are most technical are least true. In 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 59 


attempting to trace the development of public cere- 
monial one so easily loses sight of the primary fact 
that the spread of Christianity was the spread of a 
devotional conception of the private life, which we 
have allowed to fade away. The essential thing was 
the spirit and exercises of worship in the individual 
and family life; and public worship was at heart an 
extension of these private devotions. 

In this devotional life, if anywhere, Christian 
song, just because of its spiritual character, must 
find its springs. And evidently it played a large 
part in the personal and family life of second and 
third century Christianity. 

At Alexandria, where East and West met, Clem- 
ent, in his second century Méscellanies, pictures viv- 
idly the true Gnostic as moving in a very atmosphere 
of hymnody: “We cultivate our fields, praising; we 
sail the sea, hymning.”* The Christian’s “whole 
life is a holy festival. His sacrifices are prayers and 
praises and Scripture readings before meals, psalms 
and hymns during meals and before bed, and prayers 
again during night. By these he unites himself to 
the heavenly choir.’* As though by way of ex- 
ample, the famous hymn which Dr. Dexter has 
made familiar as “Shepherd of tender youth” was 
appended to his Instructor by his own or a later 
hand. 

In North Africa Tertullian makes it an objection 
to the marriage of a Christian with an unbeliever 
that they could not sing together. Whereas, if both 


60 Christian Hymnody 


are Christians, “between the two echo psalms and 
hymns, each challenging the other which shall better 
chant to the Lord.” ° 

Tertullian was not, like Clement, a writer of 
hymns. “We have a plenty,” he told the Chris- 
tians whom he would entice from the theater. 
“Plenty of verses, sentences, songs, proverbs.” * 
Some he did not approve of: such as “the hymns of 
Valentine,” not to be rated “a respectable author.” ° 

We know at least the names of other writers. 
The martyred Ignatius wrote a hymn to Christ.° 
Another martyr, Athenogenes, left one as “a kind of 
farewell gift,” that was still circulating in the 
fourth century.’ Hippolytus, who came also to be 
accorded a martyr’s halo, is said to have composed 
a whole book of odes.* Dionysius of Alexandria 
speaks affectionately of “the numerous psalms” of 
Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, “so dear to a vast num- 
ber of the faithful.” ° 

The very casualness of these scattered allusions 
shows how wide and free was the atmosphere in 
which the new hymns were composed and received. 
An impulse, which canonical Psalms did not satisfy, 
to render homage to Christ was behind most of 
them,—a motive that kept on renewing itself. So 
much so that at the end of the second century, an 
unnamed defender of the faith against the Arians 
could point out their unbroken continuity: ‘So 
great a number of Christian psalms and odes, com- 
posed by the faithful from the very beginning, in 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 61 


which they celebrate Christ, the Word of God, pro- 
claiming Him Very God.” *° 


The hymns were in Greek, the language of the 
Christian community, East and West, except in a 
group of Syriac churches centering at Edessa. Even 
at Rome till the end of the second century not only 
the literature but the ritual was in Greek. The 
“Kyrie eleison” of the Latin liturgy survives as a 
living witness to the fact. 

Some were modeled on the Septuagint Psalter, 
and gained the quaint title of “private psalms.” 
Some were “odes,” like the “Gloria in excelsis,’ 
based on the angels’ song. Or the lovely hymn for 
the lamp-lighting hour, which Keble made familiar 
as “Hail! gladdening Light of His pure glory 
poured.” It was a relic of household worship that 
Basil called ancient even in his time.” 

But a preference for Greek classical meters arose 
very early. Clement’s hymn is an example. So is 
the metrical acrostic now in the Amherst collec- 
tion.” So, very likely, were “the psalms of a new 
kind” Epiphanius ascribed to the Egyptian ascetic 
Hierakas.” 


There is no room to question that the new hymns 
were used in public worship. Our earliest report 
happens to be from outside, due to Pliny’s anxiety 
at the spread of the faith in Bithynia. He describes 
for the emperor a night service very early in the 


62 Christian Hymnody 


second century. His witnesses affirm “a custom of 
meeting before dawn on a stated day, and singing 
by turn a hymn to Christ as a god.” “ The Bithyni- 
ans are reported as gathering for a common meal, 
and this Love Feast gave no doubt especial oppor- 
tunity for Christian song. 

In the Dédache, where feast and sacrament are 
still connected, no one could draw the line between 
them or between prayers, thanksgivings and songs. 

Tertullian, describing the Love Feast in North 
Africa, after it had been separated from the Eu- 
charist, tells us that “after hand-washing and bring- 
ing in the lights each is asked to stand forth and sing 
as he can a hymn to God, either one from Holy 
Scripture or one of his own composing—a proof of 
the measure of his drinking.” 

Clement of Alexandria devotes to the music of the 
Christian feast a whole chapter of his Instructor,” 
which is no more than an amplification of St. Paul’s 
warning to the Corinthians, and shows pagan revelry 
and spiritual emotion, pagan song and Christian 
hymnody, still contending unseemly at the gate of 
an observance ideally so beautiful. 

In respect of the Communion itself, Justin Mar- 
tyr’s account of it (in Antioch perhaps at the middle 
of the second century) says nothing of psalm or 
hymn, unless such were included in the prayers and 
thanksgivings offered by the President and re- 
sponded to by the people. But he had just men- 
tioned the custom in their worship of offering thanks 


a ns ee 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 63 


in hymns.*’ Probably the Communion was pre- 
ceded by a course of psalmody as in the fourth cen- 
tury liturgies. To what extent private psalms 
entered in we cannot tell. 

In Greek, as in Jewish and apostolic worship, 
there was no clear discrimination of praise and 
prayer or even singing and reading. Very likely 
what we call the prayers of fourth century liturgies 
are transcripts or compilations of earlier Christian 
psalms. In the Testament of our Lord the prayers 
which offer praise are throughout designated as 
“Hymns.” 


IJ. THe Greek SETTLEMENT OF THE QUES- 
TION 


Private psalms and Christian odes never won a 
parity with canonical Psalms, the Church’s cher- 
ished inheritance of praise. This difference of level 
was used subtly in proceedings to depose Paul of 
Samosata, an adventurer who became Bishop of 
Antioch for a decade from 260. The charge was 
that he suppressed “the Psalms chanted there in 
honor of our Lord.” His plea was one of confes- 
sion and avoidance. The psalms he had suppressed 
“were not the ancient Psalms of David: they were 
new and the work of new men.” ** 

There was indeed growing up in “Catholic” circles 
a suspicion of the hymn of human composure. It 
was due in part to jealousy for the supremacy of 


64 Christian Hymnody 


Scripture, but yet more to the activity of heretical 
parties, Gnostics especially, in using hymns as 
propaganda. 

In Edessa, as early as 200, the accomplished Bar- 
desanes had actually composed a rival psalter of 
150 psalms; “deserting David’s truth and preserv- 
ing David’s numbers,” as Ephraim put it.” It seems 
to have been sung in Syriac churches for more than 
a century. And in that trial of Paul of Samosata 
it came out that in setting aside the psalms sung in 
Christ’s honor he had not hesitated to substitute a 
new series sung by female choirs, “composed in his 
own honor’; whatever that evil-sounding phrase 
may mean. 

Of the hymns of Valentine, a Gnostic who came 
to Rome in the middle second century, we have al- 
ready heard Tertullian’s opinion. Marcion also 
came to Rome about the same time to foster his 
special type of Gnosticism, and it is likely that his 
“new book of psalms’ swelled the number of his 
followers.” 

By the fourth century the hymn had become the 
favorite common carrier of Arian heresy; not only 
among congregations, but by special “songs for sail- 
ors” and “songs for travelers,” which “insinuated 
their pernicious teachings into simple hearts through 
the charm of their music.” * 

The Church was witnessing an effective demon- 
stration of the teaching power of hymns. It could 
hardly fail to arouse in the “Catholic” type of mind 


le es Oe 


i 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 65 


a conviction that the freely-composed hymn had 
become a menace. 


That conviction throws some light upon the action 
of the Synod that met at Laodicea about 363. Its 
59th canon, or the undisputed section of it, reads: 

“Psalms composed by private men must not be 
read in the church nor uncanonical books, but only 
the canonical of the New and Old Testament.” 

“Read” covers the psalmody as well as the lec- 
tionary, since the contemporaneous usage was to 
recite the psalm by a Reader in sing-song. The 
congregational participation consisted of responses 
or a chant-wise recitation of verses somewhat in 
the manner of the antiphons of the Roman Office. 

It was these responses apparently, and anything 
else in the way of hymns the people were accus- 
tomed to sing, that were dealt with in another 
canon, the 15th, providing that “beside the psalm 
singers appointed thereto, who mount the ambo and 
sing out of the book, no others shall sing in church.” 

Neander ” and those who follow his lead make 
this to mean no more than that a member of the con- 
gregation is no longer free to start the hymn, as we 
would say of a prayer-meeting. But there was un- 
doubtedly a movement to get every part of the wor- 
ship out of the people’s hands into those of officiants. 
The day of church-building had come and the call 
for a form of service corresponding to the archi- 
tecture. With trained choristers in the lead the 


66 Christian Hymnody 


ruder outpourings of an illiterate people would be- 
come indecorous. This canon looks like an official 
approval of the movement to silence the people. 
And in view of the fact that their part in church 
song was taken away from them and was put into 
the hands of the choir, in whose exclusive possession 
it remains until the present day in the Greek church, 
it does not seem unreasonable to interpret the canon 
as meaning just what it says. 


And so we get the FIRST, a GREEK CHURCH SET- 
TLEMENT of the question that had been vexing it, 
the relation of its church song to Scripture; deciding 
the same by exalting the canonical Psalms to an ex- 
clusive place in honor and in use, and explicitly for- 
bidding the introduction of psalms of human compo- 
sition into church worship; and prohibiting the peo- 
ple from taking any part in the church song except 
as listeners to those appointed to render it. 

Both the scope and the effectiveness of this ban 
put upon “private psalms” are debatable. Certainly 
it did not hinder the development of an extensive 
Greek hymnody. And it is hard to see how a small 
local synod could have done more than establish a 
precedent. Dr. Batiffol, the accomplished historian 
of the Roman Breviary, regards its action as final: 
“private psalms were banished from Catholic litur- 
*” He is perhaps thinking only of such as 
had wormed their way into the prescribed course of 
Psalmody proper that paralleled the Lectionary. At 


gical use. 








Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 67 


most the canon appears to deal only with the sanc- 
tities of worship within church walls, and not with 
popular song or the singing of hymns in gatherings 
and festivals not covered by the liturgy. 

Chrysostom must have thought so. When he 
came to Constantinople in 398 he did not hesitate 
to meet the Arians with their own weapons and to 
imitate their processions of singers by organizing 
rival processions trained to sing orthodox hymns 
specially composed for them. He must have felt 
that the springs of sacred song were not choked, and 
that there were channels through which it might still 
flow.”* 


IV. Tue Latin SETTLEMENT 


The Greek hymn passes out of the hands of the 
people, and so beyond the scope of these lectures. 
We turn now to the Latin hymn. 


Dr. Warfield used to say that there is a real sense 
in which North Africa is the mother of us all.*” She 
was certainly the mother of the Western Church. 
And the Romanizing process that changed her lan- 
guage from Greek to Latin made Latin the mother 
tongue of that Church.** It was at Carthage, not 
Rome, that the Psalms were first chanted in Latin, 
as they are still throughout the Roman communion. 
The Septuagint had been roughly translated, and 
the roll containing the Psalter furnished the text. 


68 Christian Hymnody 


The great Tertullian had ceased to write in Greek 
by 213.’ That passionate heart did not turn to 
hymn writing, which was as well, in view of the 
virtuosity of his style. There is no tradition of 
Latin hymns as yet at Carthage. 


Their wréééng began in the fourth century with 
Hilary in his remote Gallic diocese. He made a 
book of them for his people. Jerome tells us how he 
complained of finding the Gauls unteachable in 
sacred song.** He was a theologian, and it may be 
overstrained its teaching office. 

Their sénging waited upon Ambrose of Milan, 
whose effective hymns were practically a new crea- 
tion. They make him the father of Latin hymnody 
and the real inaugurator of modern hymnody in 
every tongue. 

St. Augustine’s Confessions have made familiar to 
us all the first hearing of Ambrose’s hymns, in de- 
fending the faith against an Arian court. In 385 
he had refused to yield the new basilica at Milan to 
the dowager empress Justina. She renewed her de- 
mand a year later, when the alarm spread that not 
only the church but Ambrose’s person were to be 
seized. ‘Taking refuge in the basilica, he was sur- 
rounded by a concourse of the faithful, who for 
some days and nights guarded both church and 
bishop against the imperial troops. Ambrose or- 
ganized his affectionate flock into a band of constant 
worshipers, preaching and arranging a course of de- 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 69 


votions, and training them to sing his hymns, “lest 
the people wax faint through the tediousness of 
sorrow.” 

What an opportunity to try out his ideals of 
Christian song! He so used it as to make Milan a 
focal point in the history of the hymn. It gathers 
up the lines of development we have been studying, 
on the one side, and on the other the lines on which 
modern hymnody still proceeds. 

What was new at Milan, apart from the an- 
tiphonal singing Ambrose brought over from the 
East, was the hymns themselves. The assembly, 
the fervor, the hymnody of edification, were apos- 
tolic.—the hymns were Ambrosian. 

Their characteristic was in being composed in 
Latin meter, but so were Hilary’s. Their distinc- 
tion was in using the metrical form so successfully as 
to make it inevitable. Even to-day in our remote 
American Protestantism, when we use the word 
“hymn” in common speech we are thinking of the 
Ambrosian hymn. 

Ambrose’s difficulty lay in the artificiality of 
classical meters as a mold in which to pour Christian 
emotion. He chose the simplest of lyric meters, a 
strophe of four iambic dimeters,—a stanza of four 
eight-syllabled lines. So wisely that allowing for 
the gradual change from metrical to word accent, 
his chosen meter was almost invariably used 
in Latin hymns till the eleventh century, and is the 
familiar Long Meter of our present-day books. 


70 Christian Hymnody 


St. Augustine’s references to Ambrose’s hymns 
show how they struck a contemporary. They won 
also the sincerest flattery of imitation, becoming the 
nucleus of a body of ‘‘Ambrosiani,” which still keeps 
its place in the Roman Breviary. 


The popular hymn singing itself Ambrose set up 
at Milan spread rather quickly through Italy and 
even Gaul, and gave some promise of establishing 
itself as a permanent ordinance. Unfortunately it 
was fated to contract from the volume of congrega- 
tional song to the narrowness of monastic devotion 
and of priestly soliloquy. 

This is what happened. 

The special chance to introduce popular hymn 
singing came when the morning and evening “hours 
of prayer’’ were turning into a church service. Two 
such “hours” had been observed privately by Chris- 
tians from the first,—at the breaking of dawn and 
at lighting the household lamps. ‘These are the 
primitive “Canonical Hours,” matins and vespers. 
In addition Daniel’s ‘three times a day” influenced 
the devout, and the three hours as indicated in Acts, 
happening to coincide with the divisions of the 
civil day, were also consecrated by prayer.” This 
was still in private. But by the middle of the fourth 
century the churches were being opened for saying 
these daily offices under direction of the clergy. 
Why should the new basilicas stand empty while 
prayers and Psalms were recited outside? And then 


De ee ee a ee 


SP eS ca a tl a em ct ete apne See 





Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 71 


there was the urge of the devotional intensity mark- 
ing the groups of ascetics formed in the congrega- 
tions. ‘They were not yet set apart from common 
life, but already their specialty lay in emphasizing 
the “hours” set apart from common day. 

These had become so many, it seemed expedient 
to assign to each one its special Psalms, to avoid rep- 
etition and monotony. An Ordo Psallendi thus 
developed. But the multiplication of services that 
made the Ordo necessary also made it impossible for 
most people to attend them. They were left to 
ascetics and the clergy. 

When somewhat later the ascetics deserted the 
congregations for a life of prayer in the wilderness, 
they took with them the Ordo Psallendi and such 
Ambrosian hymnody as was included, and left be- 
hind nothing more than the obligation of the clergy 
to read the Daily Office which still edifies, or it may 
be burdens, the Roman Catholic priesthood.” 

And so it happened that the Ambrosian hymns 
themselves, and the singing of hymns Ambrose had 
set up at Milan, passed out of the people’s lives, 
and became the exclusive possession of the clergy. 
They were sung only by the monks in their com- 
munities or the choirs of monastic churches: outside 
they were read in private by secular priests. 


In both community and church the staple of the 
monastic Office was the orderly cantillation of the 
canonical Psalms. Whether they might be supple- 


72) Christian Hymnody 


mented by metrical hymns, more suggestive of the 
hour or day or season being observed, was a question 
that would not be stilled, a case of conscience,—the 
old question of the supremacy of Scripture in praise: 
and behind it the ascetic spirit that glories in the 
clean hearth and the rigor of the game. 

The decision lay with the monks as most con- 
cerned. It was practically settled when early in the 
sixth century Benedict of Nursia issued his famous 
“Rule,” reducing a monk’s life to clocklike regu- 
larity. He made hymn singing a part of it, adopted 
the Ambrosiané and distributed them among the 
various Hours.** His example was followed by 
Aurelian, Bishop of Arles. And in 567 a Council 
at Tours went further, saying, “There are writers 
beside St. Ambrose whose hymns are _ beautiful 
enough to deserve singing, and should be received” ; 
provided the author’s name is set forth in each case. 

But there was strong opposition. The Ambrosian 
hymns were not received at Rome, and her influence 
was against them for centuries. In Spain a small 
council at Braga in 563 had forbidden the singing in 
church of anything “poetical” except Scripture 
songs. This hostility must have lingered long in 
Spain, for in 633 the Council of Toledo found it 
necessary to show cause why hymns should be al- 
lowed. 

It is impossible to read its findings without a 
smile at the circles in which progress moves; for a 
thousand and more years afterward in far-off Eng- 





ee 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 73 


land young Isaac Watts was to confront just the 
same situation, to meet it with the same impatience 
with the Psalm singers and just the same arguments 
for human hymns as were exhibited at Toledo. 

““We possess,”’ it was there declared, “some hymns 
composed to the praise of God, the Apostles and the 
martyrs, such as those of the Blessed Doctors Hilary 
and Ambrose. And these are rejected by certain 
people on the pretext that nothing should be re- 
ceived into the liturgy except the text of Holy 
Scripture only. What do these people say of 
‘Gloria Patri’? And what of ‘Gloria in excelsis’? 
And what of the lessons read in the Office? And of 
the prayers? There is then no more ground for 
condemning the hymns than the prayers, and in 
this matter Gaul and Spain ought to observe the 
same custom.” 


And so, by the seventh century, in Spain as well 
as in Gaul the Ambrosian hymn had won its way 
into the Daily Office; and in Ireland also, as a ' 
surviving copy of the Bangor Antiphonary (now ap- 
propriately kept at Milan) testifies. To us, who 
associate them especially with the Roman Breviary, 
it is hard to realize the five centuries that elapsed 
during which Rome stood firm for the exclusive use 
of “the Bible only” as church song. It thus antic- 
ipated the position which some of us may have 
imagined was first taken by John Calvin. Not until 
the end of the twelfth century were hymns of human 


74. Christian Hymnody 


composure admitted into the Office as sung at 
Rome,” and only then was their victory complete. 

But what a victory! The introduction of hymns 
at Rome probably involved little more than their 
singing by the monks attached to the basilicas. 
How far a remove from Ambrose’s project of an 
evening and morning prayer at which the plain 
people could do their own singing! 


Thus we have the sEconp, the LATIN CHURCH 
SETTLEMENT of the vexed question of the relation 
of hymns to Holy Scripture. 

The canonical Psalms are the source of the sub- 
ject-matter of praise both in the Daily Office and the 
Mass. Scriptural canticles and a few ancient prose 
hymns from the Greek are also used in the liturgy. 
But the Rule of Benedict, providing for the chant- 
ing of the entire Psalter from beginning to end 
within each week of the year, makes the Psalms su- 
preme if only for the overshadowing of their pre- 
ponderating bulk, to say nothing of the loyalty to 
Scripture which such a Rule attests. In this daily 
diet of psalmody a limited number of approved 
metrical hymns of human composure are inserted at 
fixed points of the Office; serving to connect the 
Psalms with the hour, the day, or the season of the 
Christian Year.** After the ninth century the pro- 
vision was somewhat enlarged by admitting some 
hymns of freer meter, called Sequences,** into the 


+ pike 





Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 75 


Mass, which had become the principal service of 
parish churches. 

The actual singing in churches, whether monastic 
or parochial, was to be done by officiants in the choir. 
For participation by the congregation in the nave 
there was no provision whatever and no opportunity. 


V. Tue LutTHEeRAN SETTLEMENT 


Such was substantially the situation as the Refor- 
mation dawned in Germany. 

No one was more familiar with it than Martin 
Luther, an Augustinian monk. No one was better 
equipped to sponsor a Protestant movement to re- 
store the hymn to the people: to restore it to its right 
place in worship by first making it a messenger of 
the gospel to men’s hearts. And he had the prec- 
edent and encouragement of the successful rise of a 
popular hymnody in the Hussite revival. 

Luther brought away from the convent a real 
love for the hymns and plain song of the Daily 
Office. So real that he lacked heart to “banish the 
Latin language from divine service” altogether, for 
the sake of ‘“‘so much fine music and hymnody the 
Latin has.” * Nevertheless his great work lay in 
freeing the hymn from its shackling Latinity, and 
developing a vernacular hymnody more on the lines 
of German folk song. 

He had first to find the hymns or make them. 


76 Christian Hymnody 


“We lack poets, or else they are not known, who can 
write for us godly spiritual songs, as Paul calls them. 
Should there be any German poets, I say this to 
stimulate them.” ** Luther thus made himself re- 
sponsible for the copious production of German 
hymns. Perhaps his choice of “‘spiritual songs” from 
St. Paul’s trio helped to fix upon them their charac- 
teristic concern with inward experience. 

The best he could do at the moment was to point 
out two or three of the rather rude and not always 
decorous current songs as “grave enough.” “ His 
little booklet of 1524 had only eight hymns: his last 
hymn book of 1545 had 101, 35 by himself. 

Luther’s hymns, so long disregarded in Reformed 
Churches, are nevertheless the foundation of Prot- 
estant song. They are as plain as Ambrose’s, with 
more metrical variety but hardly poetic. With him 
the hymn becomes evangelical, and it is cheerful by 
intention. “When we sing,” he said with customary 
good sense, ‘“‘both heart and mind should be cheerful 
and merry.” ** His hymns belong mostly to St. 
Paul’s hymnody of edification.*” 


From the hymn book prefaces and the discursive 
but very edifying liturgical writings, we can shape 
without difficulty the THIRD, the LUTHERAN SETTLE- 
MENT of the relation of hymns to Scripture. 

It retained canonical Psalmody as a distinctive 
ordinance, as in the Latin Church. “Let the entire 
Psalter, distributed into parts, remain in use at the 





Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 77 


morning and evening service.” “° He of course re- 


lieved the congregation of the obligation to go 
through the Psalter in a week in the immensely pro- 
tracted lengths of the “parts” of the Daily Office; 
which had rested on the Roman clergy. This obli- 
gation, in his plain way, Luther called ‘fa donkey’s 
burden.” He expected the Psalms to be sung where 
practicable, and was quite willing they be sung in 
the customary Latin. In the schools the boys are 
“to sing some Psalms in Latin every morning.” * 

The Lutheran settlement appropriated the metri- 
cal hymn side by side with the Psalm, as found in 
the Latin Office. The inventor of our metrical hymn 
was Ambrose, not Luther. But he took it away from 
the closed hands of clergy and choristers and put it 
into the hands of the people. He translated it into 
their tongue and freed it from all the rubrical re- 
strictions of office books. Not by comparing Roman 
and Lutheran liturgies do we come upon Luther’s 
dealings with the hymn. He took it out of liturgies 
and put it into people’s hearts and homes, that when 
they had learned it and loved it they might bring it 
to the church and sing it together. He revived, that 
is to say, St. Paul’s conception of hymnody as a 
spiritual function. 


It is important to understand how these dealings 
with the hymn, so directly opposite to those of later 
reformers, were nevertheless made to accord in 
Luther’s own thinking with his governing liturgical 


78 Christian Hymnody 


canon,—the supremacy of the Scriptures in church 
worship. 

(a) He found his authority for composing and 
using spiritual songs in St. Paul’s coupling them 
with Psalms and in the practice of the Apostolic 
Church: “ the stand-point incidentally of our first 
lecture. 

(b) He acknowledged that such authority and 
precedent may be rightly claimed “in an especial 
manner in respect of Psalms,” and therefore (note 
the logic) he favored “the attempt to transforni a 
Psalm into a hymn,” retaining its sense but passing 
by “‘certain forms of expression and employing other 
suitable ones.” * Thus he anticipated Dr. Watts’ 
The Psalms of David imitated. 

(c) The thought that had troubled the early 
Church and was to divide the Protestant, that the 
provision of an inspired book of song precluded the 
intrusion of human composures, found no lodgment 
in Luther’s mind. To prevent its lodging in any 
other’s he calls “the songs of holy writ to witness 
that patriarchs and prophets composed original 
hymns,” and therefore a modern reformer and his 
friends who do likewise should “‘not be looked upon 
as innovators” but as following in the train of these 
ancient worthies. 

(d) But the vital connection of the Lutheran 
hymn with the Bible is through its theme and sub- 
ject-matter. The evangelical content of the hymn 





Ce ge ee 


meant everything to Luther. “What I wish,” he © . 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 79 


wrote his friend Spalatin, “is to make German hymns 
for the people, that the Word of God may dwell 
in their hearts by means of song also.” Upon that 
ideal the whole edifice of the new hymnody rested. 
Like everything in Lutheran worship it illustrated 
the conviction of its great founder that the suprem- 
acy of Scripture in Christian worship means that 
the worship must be a setting forth of Christ’s gospel. 


From this we are now to turn to the fathers of 
the Reformed Churches, whose reverence for the 
same Bible led them not only to reject the Lutheran 
hymnody but to banish the hymn of human com- 
posure from the whole breadth of the Reformed 
world. 


VI. Tue Catvinistic SETTLEMENT 


We think of Zwingli and Calvin as taking 
Luther’s place in the Churches we have agreed to 
call “Reformed.” The name is unhappy. It was 
Luther, with his love of the Latin Church, who con- 
templated reforming it. Whereas Zwingli and Cal- 
vin had the vision of a primitive Church restored 
rather than an existing Church reformed. 

But in discussing Calvin’s settlement of church 
praise we must remember that his work at Geneva 
belongs to the second period of the Swiss Reforma- 
tion, and was constructive, not iconoclastic. 

When he comes on the scene a model of worship 


80 Christian Hymnody 


had been set up by Zwingli for the German-speaking 
cantons. In his church at Zurich, stripped and white- 
washed, the worshipers were auditors, except for a 
few responses, the Creed, Gloria, and a recited Psalm. 
These ““ceremonies” were his concession to human 
weakness, but singing was not among them. Did 
Zwingli contemplate the anomaly of a religion with- 
out music? His most competent biographer thinks 
not.“ The facts are against him. ‘There was no 
music at Zurich for seventy years. And it is the 
facts that are Calvin’s background. 

At Geneva before Calvin came in July, 1536, they 
were using an order of worship made by Farel, an 
evangelist from German-speaking Berne to French- 
speaking cantons. Here, too, there was no singing, 
probably out of deference to Berne. But there was 
indeed nothing in French to sing. 

After a survey of the situation Calvin drew up his 
“Essentials of a well-ordered Church,” giving prom- 
inence to the Psalms “we desire to be sung in 
church,” for these three reasons: 

1. The example of the ancient Church and St. 
Paul’s testimony. 

2. The warmth and uplift they would bring to 
our prayers, now so cold. 

3. The discovery of what benefit and consolation 
the pope and his partisans have deprived the Church, 
by appropriating the Psalms to be mumbled between 
them without understanding.” 


i 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 81 


Calvin’s thought was to begin by training the chil- 
dren to sing prose Psalms to some sober ecclesiastical 
chant; the people listening till they could grow 
accustomed to use their own voices in church. The 
scheme was rather in the air; Calvin’s influence was 
waning and political considerations induced the 
Council to adhere to the church usages Berne was 
pressing upon Geneva. This to Calvin meant the 
supremacy of State over Church. Rather than yield 
he suffered banishment. 

It is well to note that in his humiliation and his 
appreciation of the need of complaisance, Calvin 
none the less made it the sénme qua non of his return 
to Geneva that the singing of Psalms be made a part 
of public worship.** This purpose, indomitable and 
perhaps not without a touch of the heroic, is the 
historical basis on which the whole structure of Met- 
rical Psalmody rests. 

Calvin’s banishment brought him at Strasburg 
the opportunity of hearing the Germans sing 
Luther’s hymns; and convinced him that French 
Psalms could just as well be turned into modern 
meters and set to congregational tunes. He soon had 
his little flock of French refugees there singing after 
some fashion and in 1539 printed a little psalm book 
for them. In direct contrast with Luther’s first 
booklet, its contents, excepting the Creed, were en- 
tirely Biblical: 17 Psalms in meter and one in prose, 
“Nunc dimittis’” and the Commandments versified. 

Calvin was back in Geneva by 1541, and could 


82 Christian Hymnody 


have anything he wanted, even Psalm singing. He 
proceeded to enlarge and improve his little Stras- 
burg book. But his standard was so high that 
twenty-one years passed before he fulfilled his pur- 
pose to provide his people with a complete metrical 
version of the Scripture Psalms.” 


We have then the rourtTH, the CALVINISTIC SET- 
TLEMENT Of the relation of the hymn to Scripture: 
as conservative as the Judaizers in the Apostolic 
Church could have wished for, or as was laid down 
by the Council of Braga in the sixth century. 

The hymn of human composure that had been 
sung so freely in the early Church, that had won so 
hardly a restricted place in the liturgy of the Latin 
Church, that had developed so phenomenally in the 
German Reformation, is now excluded from Re- 
formed worship. The inspired songs of Scripture, 
substantially the Old Testament Psalter, furnish 
the exclusive subject-matter of praise. Translated 
into the vernacular, versified in modern meters, set 
to congregational tunes, they become the hymns of 
the Church. 


The first question to emerge is whether Calvin 
aimed to lay down a hard and fast rule binding the 
Reformed Church for all time? 

Undoubtedly all his arrangements at Geneva were 
by way of exemplifying “a well-ordered Church,” 
and among its essentials, he said, was “the singing of 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 83 


the Psalms” in worship. Just as he insisted on sing- 
ing against Zwingli’s silence, so he emphasized 
psalmody against Luther’s hymnody. 

Calvin of course was dealing with a situation 
rather than the future. Like Luther before him, and 
practically all the Psalm versifiers after him who dis- 
closed their motives in prefaces, he was nauseated by 
the unseemly and amorous songs that were corrupt- 
ing the youth of his country. He was offended just 
as much by the Latin hymns of the Church, because 
by his time they had become vehicles of Mariolatry, 
saint worship and other things he abominated. Ob- 
viously then songs of human composure, to say the 
best of them, were subject to the contagion of levity 
and heresy. 

“What is to be done?” Calvin asks in his preface 
of 1543.°° Itis, he says: 

First: To find songs not only pure but holy. 

Second: But none can write them save he who 
has received the power from God Himself. 

Third: “When we have searched all around, here 
and there, we shall find no songs better or more 
suitable than the Psalms of David which the Holy 
Spirit dictated and gave to him.” 

Fourth: “And therefore, when we sing them, we 
are as sure that God hath put words into our mouths 
as if He Himself sang with us to exalt His glory.” 

Expressions so cautious and considerate make us 
wonder if there were advocates of Lutheran hym- 
nody at Geneva, whom it was prudent to placate. 


84. Christian Hymnody 


In any event if Calvin felt more than he ex- 
pressed, he kept it to himself. No one has produced 
any assertion that the canonical Psalter was the di- 
vinely prescribed hymn book for all time. On the 
contrary his Commentary on Colossians admits that 
St. Paul’s ‘Psalms and hymns and spiritual odes” 
covers “all kinds of song,” except that “spiritual” 
excludes ‘‘frivolities and trifles.” Calvin rested his 
cause (and won it) not on any divine prescription of 
the Psalter but on its inspiration. There is no 
evidence that he had scruples of conscience against 
the use of human songs. If he had he preferred to 
propose a counsel of prudence and not a case of 
conscience. 


Most of us are likely to feel now that Calvin’s 
settlement of the matter lacks the finality that 
comes through comprehensiveness. But now is not 
then. Asa handling of the situation it was masterly. 
In an emergency it is often the single-track mind 
that discerns the path ahead and commands the fol- 
lowing. Calvin must have read deeply into the 
French character, and with some foresight of what 
French Protestants were to go through. If not, he 
was the unconscious instrument of a clear Provi- 
dence. 

In the Metrical Psalms he gave the people an 
appealing part of the Bible in their own tongue; 
which accounts for the thrill of Huguenot psalmody. 
In the little psalm books he gave it into their own 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 85 


personal possession. The humblest of them might 
have a copy of his very own: the symbol and vehicle 
of his personal communion with God. 

Some sixty-four editions within four years, sup- 
plying Switzerland and peddled through France, 
show how wide that sense of ownership became, and 
explain how psalmody became a part of personal 
life. The metrical Psalter made the Huguenot 
character. No doubt a character nourished on Old 
Testament ideals will lack the full symmetry of the 
gospel. But the Huguenot was a warrior first, called 
to fight and suffer for his faith. And in singing 
Psalms he found his confidence and strength. Now 
that we have seen an idealized pugnacity and a 
stolid endurance combined in the French soldiery in 
their war against Germany, we can understand how 
the Huguenot found no Psalm too militant, no im- 
precation too severe, against his Lord’s enemies. 

In the wars of religion the Psalms in meter were 
the songs of camp and march, the war-cry on the 
field, the swan song at the martyr’s stake.” 


There was naturally no question of the proper 
subject-matter of praise when “the Reformed 
Churches of France” met in Synod in 1559. The 
Calvinistic settlement was read into the constitution. 
The bringing of his own psalm book to church by 
every worshiper was made a part of the discipline.” 
It was a token of the believer’s personal share in 
church song. The injunction to uncover his head 


86 Christian Hymnody 


while he sang was a token of the dignity of God’s 
Word in song. 


VII. Doctor Warts’ SETTLEMENT 


Calvin’s standard, ‘‘the Bible only” in praise, be- 
came a precedent for the Reformed Churches on the 
continent and in Scotland. Even the Church of 
England had to give the people a metrical Psalter 
to bind up with the Prayer Book. Naturally, as is 
the way of religious precedents, it hardened into a 
church principle. I have suggested that to us it may 
not seem a final settlement of the matter. But it was 
final to those who carried on the Calvinistic Refor- 
mation and to generations succeeding them through 
two centuries. 

It was still regarded as final by the immigrants 
from various shores (except Germany) who laid the 
foundations of American Protestantism, and until 
the gospel fervor of the Great Awakening put the 
matter to question once more. In the Presbyterian 
Church, most conscious of its Calvinistic inheritance, 
the issue thus raised passed from the debate on an 
academic question into a living flame of controversy 
that scorched kind hearts, broke up parishes, and 
convulsed the Church. It was only after years of 
bitterness and disruption that Calvin’s settlement of 
praise was overthrown, and the right to sing hymns 
of human composure was vindicated. 

It ought to enhance our sense of privilege in sing- 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 87 


ing them to remember how hardly that privilege 
was won. It ought to make us more tolerant toward 
others to realize that we can only exercise that privi- 
lege by turning our own backs on the most distinc- 
tive tradition of Reformed worship. 


There is no reason for assuming that the body of 
Reformed Churches actually framed a theory that 
the inspired Book of Psalms was the divinely pre- 
scribed hymn book, or that they ever banned New 
Testament canticles. But, as things worked out, 
their practice did confine them to an Old Testament 
psalmody as rigidly as though prescribed. 

And this was to prove the weakness of Psalm 
singing, the little rift within the lute. For it shut 
out the church’s song from the light of the gospel 
the pulpit was preaching. It barred even its men- 
tion of that Name in which the congregation was 
praying. 

However long delayed, the break with the old 
Psalmody was bound to come in the interests of 
spiritual reality. A New Testament Church was 
bound to resume the new song. 


Our immediate concern is with English-speaking 
Churches.” The low estate into which their psalm- 
ody had fallen by the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, its spiritual indifference, the shocking dilapida- 
tion of its music, fairly cried out for a change. 
What was waited for was a leader willing to incur 


88 Christian Hymnody 


the reproach of change and capable of furnishing the 
materials for an evangelical hymnody. 

He appeared in the person of Isaac Watts, a min- 
ister among the Independents, of marked gifts, who 
wore the self-confidence of youth like a panoply, 
and advanced into what he knew would be a fray 
with full intent of being the aggressor. 

And now as to his tactics. He first (1707) 
showed the feasibility of the new song in a volume 
of original hymns adapted to the Psalm meters. As 
an appendix he printed an Essay towards the Im- 
provement of Christian Psalmody, proposing a new 
“System of Praise’ that included Psalms, hymns 
and spiritual songs. 


This, in view of the novelty of its terms and of 
the general adoption of its proposals, must be reck- 
oned the FIFTH, am EVANGELICAL SETTLEMENT of 
the relation of our hymns to the Bible. 

In all fairness it should bear the name of Watts. 
In the light of its immediate surroundings it was so 
glaringly original. But, as we discuss it, I think 
we shall come to feel more and more that to a larger 
view, it was hardly more than a dislodgment of the 
Calvinistic settlement in favor of a reaffirmation 
of Luther’s, which was the original evangelical set- 
tlement of hymnody. 

(a) Watts denied in general that we are under 
the call, either of God or of Christian prudence, to 
sing the Bible. Quite the contrary. The Bible is 





Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 89 


God’s word to us. It is to be received as such and 
personally appropriated. That being done, our 
hymns represent, not our repetition of God’s word, 
but our response to it, our word to God. And our 
word to God can be expressed in the letter of the 
Bible only in so far as its language can properly be 
made our own. And thus he laid the ground for 
the free hymn of human composure, especially evan- 
gelical hymns responding to the fullness of God’s 
revelation of Himself in Christ. 

(b) In particular Watts denied that the Book of 
Psalms was either a canonical hymn book for the 
Christian Church or adapted to its use. It was a 
Jewish not a Christian book. In a Christian praise 
book the supremacy must be given to the gospel, not 
to the Psalms. “Some of ’em are almost opposite to 
the Spirit of the Gospel; many of them foreign to 
the State of the New Testament, and widely differ- 
ent to the present Circumstances of Christians.” 
This thought he proceeded to elucidate by exegesis 
and illustration with a frankness no doubt trying to 
the lovers of the Psalms. All this was leading up 
to his conclusion that if we are to make Christian 
hymns of the Psalms we must first translate them 
anew ; that is to say, rewrite them in the way David 
would have written them if he had been a Christian 
and not a Jew, and were a loyal citizen of eighteenth 
century England. 

This he proceeded to do, on his own account, fur- 
nishing the churches with his famous The Psalms of 


90 Christian Hymnody 


David imitated in 1719. Jam looking while I write 
at a presentation copy of that book to his ‘Hon? 
Uncle,” and wondering if any other has been so mo- 
mentous in the later history of Reformed Churches. 
It was the bridge across which many of them, in- 
cluding our own, forced their way, half uncon- 
sciously, from the restrictions of an imposed Psalm- 
ody to the more open country of which Christ is the 
Light and the Song. 

(c) Further, Watts denied the claim of the Met- 
rical Psalm to be the pure word of God. If it be 
our duty to sing only in the words of Scripture, met- 
rical versions do not fulfill the requirement. The 
exigencies of rhythm and rhyme make a really faith- 
ful rendering of the Hebrew into English verse an 
impossible thing. Those who wish nothing but the 
pure word must resort to prose, and must learn the 
Hebrew music or at least employ the method of 
chanting practiced in Church of England cathedrals. 

The point was a neat one from the contempora- 
neous point of view. Watts’ criticism of the Metrical 
Psalm is equally valid from the standpoint of mod- 
ern culture. The English ballad meter, which was 
the favorite of the old psalm books, was an inade- 
quate medium for transmitting either the form or 
spirit of Hebrew poetry. If the Psalms are to be 
read in English, prose couplets are best, and if they 
are to be sung the method of chanting “practiced in 
English cathedrals” is the most available. 

It was no part of Watts’ proposal to give up either 





Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 91 


the form or substance of metrical psalmody. He 
would carry it on not as inspired Scripture but as a 
department of Christian song whose “‘sense and ma- 
terials” were taken from the Bible. And when to 
this evangelized and modernized Psalter was added 
a body of hymns of purely human composure, rep- 
resenting our appropriation of the gospel through 
Christian experience, we get the full terms of Watts’ 
settlement of the relation of Christian song to the 


Bible. 


It worked. Among the humblest Independents 
first of all; more gradually throughout the Churches 
that had hitherto stood for “the Bible only.” The 
accommodated Psalms became the recognized stand- 
ard of Calvinistic orthodoxy. The hymn of human 
composure won the place alongside from which it 
has never been dislodged. The twin volumes of 
“Watts’ Psalms and Hymns” made themselves at 
home in the pews, and represented respectively the 
Old and New Testaments in praise. 


VUI. Tue Mopern Disposition oF THE QUEs= 
TION 


The present-day attitude of the Church has not 
come about in the terms of another formal settle- 
ment of the matter but as a natural result of its own 
experimenting with the double standard of ‘Psalms 
and Hymns” set up by Dr. Watts. 


92 Christian Hymnody 


When once the divide had been reached, those on 
whom the obligation or the custom of singing canon- 
ical Psalms still pressed were neither fooled nor con- 
ciliated by his Psalms of David imitated. They 
stayed, as considerable numbers of them stay apart 
yet, to praise God according to their conscience. It 
has been claimed recently that not less than thirteen 
Reformed communions adhere to the principle of 
an inspired psalmody. Presumably the Synodical 
action of 1925 by the United Presbyterians must be 
regarded as a defection. 

But the congregations and communions that ad- 
mitted human hymns to a parity with divine Psalms 
did so because the impulse to sing the gospel was 
more pressing than any duty they felt of singing 
Psalms. And in practice the evangelical hymns 
turned out to be more appealing than evangelized 
Psalms. The new psalmody was a little heavy with 
its adjustments of prophecy and gospel, its replace- 
ments of Israel by Great Britain or “the States.” 
And then it was static, while the hymnody was con- 
stantly being freshened with new composures and 
adjusted to changes in Christian feeling. And so 
the use of Psalms tended to diminish. 

The era of “Psalms and Hymns” gradually 
merged into an era of “Hymns.” As the books 
labeled on their backs, “Psalms and Hymns” had 
replaced the Psalms in meter, so the “Hymnal” 
came to replace the “Psalms and Hymns.” Some 
still surviving can remember when the Old School 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 93 


Presbyterian Psalms and Hymns was replaced by 
the Hymnal of 1866; a book futile enough, but a 
landmark still as the first to ignore the old division 
into Psalms and hymns. 

In modern hymnals such Psalm versions as are 
retained are kept there generally for their intrinsic 
worth as hymns, or possibly for some association’s 
sake; but in either case without regard to their fidel- 
ity as translations. The fetters, whether of obliga- 
tion, or of prudence, or of use and wont, that held 
the Church’s songs so close to the letter of Scripture, 
were in the minds and habits of English-speaking 
Christians finally severed by Dr. Watts. 

Some of the eighteenth century writers seem to 
have had a feeling that it was proper to relate their 
hymns to particular passages of Scripture, either as 
a Psalm-version relates itself to a canonical Psalm, 
or at least as a sermon relates itself to a text. Of the 
three “books” of Watts’ Hymns the first bears the 
title, “Collected from the Scriptures.” The first 
book of Newton and Cowper’s Olney Hymns is “On 
select Texts of Scripture.” Even Charles Wesley 
printed two volumes of Short Hymns on select 
passages of Scripture. But probably this practice 
was largely occasioned by the general desire of 
evangelical preachers to find hymns on the text or 
passage from which they preached, to use as illus- 
trations or enforcements of their sermon. 

The Church of Scotland, where the tradition of a 
Scriptural psalmody was especially tenacious, did 


94 Christian Hymnody 


endeavor, between the years 1743 and 1781, to cover 
the new hymnody with the old sanction by applying 
to it the method of Scripture paraphrasing. After 
much travail the General Assembly set forth in the 
latter year its Translations and Paraphrases, in verse, 
of several passages of Sacred Scripture. The hope 
was of finding common ground where the upholder 
of Scripture song and the clamorous advocate of 
the new hymns might dwell together in peace and 
sing in harmony. It was a vain hope and a poor 
expedient—largely camouflage. A few of the Para- 
phrases are still familiar, notably ‘“O God of Bethel, 
by whose hand” and “Come, let us to the Lord our 
God.” But they abide because good hymns, and 
few of those who sing them think of relating them 
to the Scripture they paraphrase. 

The modern feeling in these matters involves no 
special distaste for the practice of paraphrasing a 
Scripture passage in order to make a hymn, provided 
the paraphraser can make something that approaches 
poetry and stimulates devotion. Most congregations 
enjoy the simplicity of the Tate and Brady “While 
shepherds watched their flocks by night”; but I dare 
say they prefer Phillips Brooks’ contemplation of 
the “little town of Bethlehem” from a human point 
of view. The Communion paraphrase, “’Twas on 
that night when doomed to know” is still dear to 
many Scottish hearts. But a wider public prefers 
Montgomery’s “According to Thy gracious word,” 


lite tonite TO a 


Relation of the Hymn to Scripture 95 


in which the singer does not recite but does appro- 
ptiate the Words of Institution. 


The fact is simply that, as this whole matter of 
the relation of our praise to Scripture stands to-day 
in the minds and hearts of most of us, the conviction 
abides that the Christian hymn has by a process of 
development disassociated itself from that inevitably 
close connection with the letter of Scripture which 
it took on at the Calvinistic Reformation. There 
has been indeed not so much a process of develop- 
ment as a reversion. To most of us the good Dr. 
Watts’ conception of the Hymn as the singer’s de- 
votional response to God’s revelation of Himself— 
in Scripture indeed, and also beyond Scripture, 
through a living Christ and a personal experience, 
dominates the situation completely. And it seems 
to us to reveal and to deepen the true relation of our 
hymns to Scripture, because it is so obviously a re- 
version to the Pauline ideal of Christian song and so 
faithful to the spirit and the letter of such of the 
primitive hymns as have survived. 





LECTURE THREE 


THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO 
LITERATURE 


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LECTURE THREE 


THE RELATION OF THE HYMN TO 
LITERATURE 


I. Lro X’s ScHEME oF a CrassicaL HyMnopy 


The relation of the hymn to Scripture was pre- 
sented in the last lecture as a phase of the subject 
that has been in the mind of the Church from the be- 
ginning, often pressing heavily upon its conscience 
also. 

The same thing cannot be said of the relation of 
the hymn to literature. The great poetry of the 
Psalms was the specific inheritance of the Christian 
Church; so also was that Hebraic tone of mind 
Matthew Arnold so greatly deplores as an impedi- 
ment to true culture. And that mind was more alert 
to what the Psalmist called the beauty of holiness 
than what a modern poet has called the religiousness 
of beauty. That some of the early fathers were 
deeply conscious of the poetic elevation of the 
Psalms hardly needs saying. 

It is likely that the church hymns, as distin- 
guished from the Psalter, were not very definitely 
subjected to what we would mean by literary criti- 
cism until after the spirit of humanism had taken 
possession of Papal Rome. When the classical Re- 
vival was at its height Leo X (1513-21) was minded 

99 


100 Christian Hymnody 


that the daily offices of the Church should find a 
new expression in a “‘Latin more pure, more spirited, 
more elegant.” He began the revision of the Brevi- 
ary by committing its hymns to an accomplished 
Latinist, Zacharias Ferreri, for rewriting. And he in 
1525 printed his new and classical hymnal with the 
approbation of Leo’s successor, Clement VII. 

I cherish a copy of Ferreri’s hymnal,* sumptu- 
ously bound as befits so elegant a specimen of typog- 
raphy, as an engaging and now innocuous memorial 
of the first concerted movement to ally church hym- 
nody with literature. An intrusion of pagan my- 
thology gave already a wrong turn to the movement, 
and yet the classical hymnal was not without its 
own felicities; as in this verse of the hymn on St. 
Francis: 


“Far in the greenwood’s shadow and its silence 
Lonely he walked, while Heaven itself grew nearer; 
Pure were the thoughts that in his gentle bosom 

Rose and were cherished.” 


II. Catvin’s Porticat STANDARD OF PsALMODY 


Calvin’s distaste for the elaborated art of the 
Roman ritual has hidden from friend and critic alike 
his zeal for such beauty as was compatible with 
his simpler standards of worship. 

Excepting Leo, he is the first church leader who 
deliberately set up a literary standard for his church 
song and called a poet to his service. But the Pope 
kept within church circles and committed his project 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 101 


to one of his bishops. Calvin went farther afield. 
In a time of bitter controversy he ignored all party 
affiliations and chose as the poet of Reformed 
Psalmody Clement Marot, a reformer only to the 
extent of favoring a house cleaning, and with whose 
manner of life Calvin could have no sympathy. But 
a poet,—a maker of ballads, rondeaux, love songs, 
society verse and court poetry; graceful, debonair, 
light-hearted, sometimes hiding real feeling beneath 
trifling, sometimes revealing it in serious verse that 
charmed his generation. The last man in France, 
one would say, to attract Calvin, yet to his mind 
the only man in France to clothe his new psalmody 
with the grace he craved. 

It is easy to say that Calvin’s scheme of a version 
of the Psalms put into current French meters, that 
people might sing them, was in itself a sin against 
literature. And that may betrue. But it was Marot 
the poet, not Calvin the reformer, who first con- 
ceived the scheme. Fluttering around the court, am- 
bitious to be court-poet, Marot began versifying 
Psalms in the meters of popular songs, handed them 
around among the ladies and gentlemen of the court, 
and with the Dauphin’s aid got them sung. 

When Calvin made his little psalm book of 1539 
at Strasburg, twelve of these court-songs had come 
into his hands. He appropriated them all, and 
added a few of his own making. Marot’s work be- 
came his standard, his own a temporary makeshift; 
discarded as Marot began to print more versions. 

Marot’s Psalms got him into trouble. The Sor- 


102 Christian Hymnody 


bonne thought they infringed the Theological Fac- 
ulty’s monopoly in interpreting Scripture. And 
under the leadings of providence, as strange as it is 
kind, Marot came to Calvin’s very side at Geneva 
as an exile. 

The sight of the great congregation in the cathe- 
dral and the volume of united voices praising God 
in their own tongue seem to have moved many 
travelers. It was all a novelty. It moved Marot 
most of all, for the French Psalms they were singing 
were his own. 

He was easily persuaded to go ahead with his ver- 
sifying, and Calvin was keen for a complete Psalter. 
I like to think of the ardent reformer and the deb- 
onair poet side by side in Genevan streets. 

Marot added twenty Psalms to the poetic stock. 
Calvin urged the Council to make a grant that would 
induce the poet tocarry on. ‘They declined, whether 
from parsimony or from annoyance at the poet’s 
refusal to wear the yoke of Genevan discipline. 
Calvin did nothing toward completing his Psalter 
as long as hope remained of completing it on Marot’s 
level. It was not till after Marot’s death that 
he entrusted it to Theodore Beza. 


Ill. Encriisno Psatmopy APART FROM LITERA- 
TURE 


The Psalms of Marot crossed the Channel in the 
active give and take between the courts of Francis I 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 103 


and Henry VIII. And one might say that they 
crossed in two separate parcels. 

To the rising school of poets at the English court 
they represented the work of a distinguished writer 
and a new sort of court poetry. They suggested the 
Psalms as a mine of poetic material. They started a 
fashion of versifying them. The Psalms of Surrey 
and Wyatt were literary exercises of this sort. They 
had no bearing upon an English ordinance of Psalm- 
ody. 

There was, however, at Henry’s court, a groom 
of the chambers, Thomas Sternhold, to whom the 
French Psalms represented a Reformation movement 
to provide the people with religious songs in their 
own tongue. He felt a call to emulate Marot by 
turning some Psalms into the English ballad meter, 
in the hope of replacing the amorous songs popular 
at court. 

These simple versions of Sternhold, as the Refor- 
mation gathered way, proved to be the nucleus of 
the metrical Psalter which in Elizabeth’s time be- 
came the congregational praise book of the English 
Church.” 

Its Psalms throughout follow Sternhold’s model. 
They are mechanical verse; sometimes doggerel 
bearing the same relation to literature that the lines 
above Shakespeare’s bones bear to Shakespeare’s 
plays. Only one exceptional passage survives in the 
poetic anthologies: 


104 Christian Hymnody 


“The Lord descended from above, 
and bowed the heavens hie: 

And underneath his fete he cast, 
the darkness of the skye. 

On Cherubs and on Cherubins, 
full royally he rode: 

And on the wings of all the windes 
came fliying all abrode.” 


These Sternhold and Hopkins Psalms played a 
brave part while the Reformation glow lasted; and 
well into the nineteenth century they continued dear 
to the rustic mind, which likes its poetry plain. They 
never could have satisfied a sensitive taste, and, as 
their use lingered, they caused chagrin and aroused 
ineffective hopes for something better. 

In that light we are to set the seventeenth-century 
Psalm versions of such writers as Bacon and Milton. 
They were not offered as poems but as samples of a 
betterment of the current psalmody on lines that 
might prove feasible. You could hardly expect a 
generation brought up on Martin Tupper to pass at 
once to Robert Browning. It was so, I fancy, that 
these proponents of new versions argued. None 
certainly, unless the Sidneys and Sandys, achieved 
anything resembling a poetic Psalter. 

Nor could that be claimed for Tate and Brady’s 
New Version,* which at the beginning of the eight- 
eenth century won its way into London and beyond, 
and in time became the classic psalm book of Massa- 
chusetts Arianism. Unjustly ridiculed, it was a 
great advance over the Old Version, in the flowing 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 105 


rhythms that make for singing and the happy phras- 
ing that makes for poetry even though falling short 
of it. How many hymns have a better opening than 
“As pants the hart for cooling streams” and “With 
glory clad, with strength arrayed”? 

There is less to be said for the new Psalms in 
meeter * adopted by the Scottish Church in Westmin- 
ster Assembly days. The manner of its rescension, 
line by line, in open meeting, the sacrifice of all be- 
side to “purity,” remove it altogether from the 
sphere of letters; just as the inweaving of its strains 
into the fabric of Scottish piety remove it from the 
sphere of mere criticism. It was the romance of 
these tender associations, no doubt, that made Sir 
Walter Scott so hostile to any improvement of 
Scottish psalmody. 

But indeed the whole vast body of English Psalm 
versions hardly relates itself to literature at all, as 
we define literature now. It is a transcription of 
Hebrew poetry on a great scale, in which conscience 
rather than taste presided over the long process of 
journey-work. 


IV. Rexricious Lyrics AND THE First ENGLISH 
Hymn Boox 


As long as Psalm singing was the established 
order in every English parish church, there was no 
motive for writing congregational hymns. But not 
even proscription can quite seal the fountains of 


106 Christian Hymnody 


holy-song. As early as the times of Elizabeth and 
James, when the practice of music was common, 
there were sacred lyrics, adapted for part singing 
to the accompaniment of lute or viol. 

Of Thomas Campion’s Two Bookes of Ayres (ce. 
10613) the first is given over to “Pure Hymnes such 
as the Seventh Day loves”: spiritual and poetic 
enough to tantalize the editors of modern hymnals. 
Josiah Conder adopted “Never weather-beaten sail 
more willing bent to shore.’ If we need more 
hymns of the heavenly homesickness none is lovelier. 
More lately The Oxford Hymn Book has included 
his “View me, Lord, a work of Thine.” These bring 
Campion into an actual connection with the origins 
of our English hymnody as unique as it is un- 
recognized. 

Campion was not consciously composing congre~ 
gational hymns. There was just one way of getting 
such into parochial worship at that date, and that 
was the application of force. It was soon applied 
by an ambitious poet, George Wither, in one of 
those eruptions from beneath the commonplace sur- 
face of things that upset the natural order of events. 

After some years of quiet preparation Wither 
amazed the Church and challenged the book inter- 
ests by printing in 1623 his Hymnes and Songs of 
the Church, fortified by an order from King James 
that the Company of Stationers should bind it in 
with every copy they issued of the Metrical Psalter. 
The English Church, that is to say, was to start sing- 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 107 


ing hymns under civil compulsion, and the hymns 
to be sung were Wither’s. His personal poverty 
afforded the occasion; his high appreciation of his 
own work was his apology. 

But his work is as hard to account for as his 
temerity. The only trace of his earlier lyrical charm 
is in some unwanted love-songs from The Song of 
Solomon: 


“Come, kiss me with those lips of thine; 
For better are thy loves than wine; 
And as thy powered ointments be, 
Such is the savour of thy name. 
And for the sweetness of the same, 
The virgins are in love with thee.” 


The body of the book is hardly more than doggerel, 
dull with platitude and piosity. 

The hymns in his Hallelujah were written after 
he had given up his hopes of enriching church wor- 
ship, and were designed to hallow private life. Aim- 
ing to cover every act and occasion, they burden each 
one by appending a string of moralizings. “A 
Hymn whilst we are washing” forbids us to regard 
even so simple a duty as its own reward. Two or 
three of better type have been revived lately,— 
“Come, oh come, with pious lays,” and “Behold the 
sun that seem’d but now.” ‘There is no doubt that 
Wither aimed at allying hymnody and foerry; for 
in the preface he calls himself a successor of George 
Herbert in “turning his muse to divine strains.” 


The Hymnes and Songs of the Church still holds 


108 Christian Hymnody 


our interest; because if the Company of Stationers 
had not gone to law, it would have been the first 
hymn book of Protestant England. 


It is interesting to speculate on what might have 
happened if Wither’s zeal had been less egotistical ; 
if he had sought to enlist the services of the remark- 
able group of devotional poets who illuminated the 
evil times of Charles I. Supplying the motive, what 
a hymn book they could have made—Quarles, 
Herrick, Herbert, Crashaw, Traherne, and, later, 
Vaughan! 

Only Quarles had the public ear. Herrick’s litany 
shows that he could write hymns. George Herbert’s 
lyrics of pure devotion, which he loved to sing alone, 
would have been less eccentric in form if many 
other voices were waiting to join in them. Cra- 
shaw’s emotion and lyrical gift needed the restraint 
that hymnody imposes. Traherne tried an appren- 
tice’s hand at hymn making. And Vaughan really 
worked out alone the conception and form of congre- 
gational song in such lyrics as: 


“My soul, there is a countrie:” 
“Up to those bright and glorious hills.” 


They are beautiful and still available. With little 
relation to the church hymnody that was to be, they 
are very suggestive of the church hymnody that 
might have been. 

As things were, the figure of George Wither 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 109 


stands alone, three-quarters of a century ahead of 
his time; an interesting and pathetic adventurer, an 
ineffective leader. 

Even so we must grant him the third place in the 
succession of those who have striven for a poetical 
hymnody: Leo, Calvin, Wither. 


V. Tue Portic HymMnopy or THE RESTORATION 


During the Puritan ascendancy, which Wither 
lived to see, all the zeal was for psalmody; and 
Parliament mingled piety and politics in futile de- 
batings whether Rous’ or Barton’s version was 
“purer.” 

Not till after the Restoration of 1660 the wind 
began to change; and it brought a feeling of hymns 
in the air. In Jeremy Taylor, inside the Church, and 
John Austin, who had left it, the feeling took shape 
in an effort to revive the Office hymnody. There 
were also a number (hardly a group) of men who 
felt more freshness in the air and the prophecy of a 
more modern hymnody. 

Bishop Ken’s morning, noon and evening hymns 
also carry a reminiscence of the daily Office, but 
humanize it with a vitality that has defied criticism. 
The melodious hymns of Samuel Crossman, “My 
song is love unknown,” “My life’s a Shade, my 
daies,” are inventoried by Matthew Arnold among 
his “awful examples.” His objection is to the 
choppy “Hallelujah meter.” But, when a writer 


110 Christian Hymnody 


turns a trying meter into melody, the criticism seems 
invalid. Richard Baxter’s “Lord, it belongs not to 
my care” is included in Palgrave’s Treasury of 
Sacred Song. As are four of John Austin’s and three 
of John Mason’s. There is the witchery of com- 
petent verse in Mason’s: 


“My Lord, my Love, was crucified ; 
He all the pains did bear; 
But in the sweetness of His rest 
He makes His servants share.” 


So gather at our call a number of writers of the 
late seventeenth century, the predecessors of Isaac 
Watts. By no means the equals of the Caroline 
group, yet their work responds to the reasonable 
demands of Christian culture, and at its best rises 
into poetry. It was, however, destined to be over- 
looked in a movement for a more popular type of 
hymn about to begin. 


VI. Warts’ Divorce or HymMnopy FROM LITER- 
ATURE 


These Restoration singers had neither the muscles 
nor the tools to make a breach in the solid bulk of 
the old psalmody. They left it to Isaac Watts to 
say what English hymns ought to be and to furnish 
them. We have studied his performance in its rela- 
tion to the Scriptures, and must now put it into re- 
lation with literature. 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 111 


For a century and more Watts held a supreme 
place in the worship and the imaginations of Non- 
conformists. They cherished a conception of his 
place among poets possible only to a very provincial 
point of view. Or one would think so. But one’s 
eyes open to find so late as September, 1858, The 
Christian Examiner, representative of Boston cul- 
ture, gravely affirming that “Watts falls below 
Shakespeare and Milton in sublimity of thought.” 

In recent criticism Watts hardly figures at all. 
Dr. Schelling brushes him aside from the path of 
The English Lyric. He finds no place in Palgrave’s 
Golden Treasury, but elsewhere its editor counts 
him “one of those whose sacrifice of Art to direct 
usefulness have probably lost them those honors in 
literature to which they were entitled.” 

That is very much Watts’ judgment of himself. 
He thought himself a poet, and the reception ac- 
corded his Hore Lyrice (1705) confirmed his judg- 
ment. In later life he came to feel that his Psalms 
and Hymns were the greatest things he had done. 
He did not regard them as poetry but as the evidence 
of his renunciation of poetry for edification’s sake. 

To explain Watts and to justify his method we 
must recall the audience he addressed. Independ- 
ency had only lately won through persecution and 
suffering and had not yet attained social respecta- 
bility. The people who held on were mostly humble 
souls of dogged loyalty and narrow convictions. 
And for them Watts wrote his hymns. He kept his 


112 Christian Hymnody 


eye, while writing, not on the exceptions or even the 
average level, but rather on what we might call the 
underworld of Nonconformity,—‘“vulgar Chris- 
tians” he called them, and ‘‘the meanest of ’em.”’ 

Dean Farrar, once asked how he managed to 
preach at Windsor to a congregation ranging from 
the royal family to the scullery maids, replied, “T 
prepare my sermon for the scullery maids, so that I 
can be sure the Queen will understand it.” Watts 
prepared his hymns for “‘the scullery maids,” but 
with even less thoughts for a Sir John Hartopp or 
Lady Abney of dissent. 

These are phrases from the original preface: 

[I have] “endeavored to make the sense plain and 
obvious.” 

“The metaphors are generally sunk to the level 
of vulgar capacities.” 

“Some of the beauties of Poesy are neglected, and 
some willfully defaced.” 

“T have cut out the lines that are too sonorous 
. . . lest a more exalted Turn of Thought or Lan- 
guage should darken or disturb the Devotion of the 
plainest Souls.” 

He goes on to explain that he had excluded such 
hymns as were more figurative or more ambitious, 
and would reserve them for the next edition of his 
“Poems.” 


The sum of it all is that the man who stood at 
the fountain-head of English hymnody chose to 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 113 


open a spring outside the area which we call litera- 
ture, and arranged a water-course for its outflow 
in the direction in which the two streams, poetry and 
hymnody, were least likely to meet and coalesce. 

His motive (covering both his “Psalms” and 
hymns) was to furnish an evangelical church song. 
His method was to find the quickest available de- 
scent to the level of the humblest Christian. 

One poetical result that method did achieve, how- 
ever unintended. It relieved the hymns of a great 
deal of poetical baggage: those high-flying rockets © 
of imagery, that opulence of artificial adornments, 
which were at that time regarded as essential to 
poetry, but which are so repulsive to us. Apart from 
that Watts’ method produced a body of virile verse 
that stated and applied the gospel to the various ex- 
periences of life very lucidly and so sympathetically 
that myriads of people learned to use his hymns as 
the natural expression of their own religious feelings. 

In that fact lies the justification of Watts’ 
method; and it brought about the complete and final 
vindication of the hymn of human composure in 
English-speaking lands. And thus the whole body 
of Watts’ work earns a place in the literature of 
power; the literature that leaves esthetic critics cold 
while it moves men. 

The body of his work now lies far behind, and 
there is none to suggest its revival. But however 
hardly Watts tried to suppress his poetic feeling, it 
was a@ préoré unlikely that his work should never rise 


114 Christian Hymnody 


above the level of his accommodated verse. In 
some hymns the poet seems to throw aside the 
preacher’s gown, to become unaware of the meanest 
Christian, to walk with God on higher ground. And 
these, unless we care to pose as meanest Christians 
still, are the songs by which Watts should be re- 
membered, and which we may be glad to sing: 


“When I survey the wondrous cross :” 
“Our God, our Help in ages past:” 
“There is a land of pure delight:” 
“My God, how endless is Thy love:” 
“Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber.” 


It is the fate of a man who succeeds conspicuously, 
especially of a pioneer, to set a fashion and furnish 
a model. Watts made the model for English hymns 
just as Ambrose did for Latin. And as Ambrose’s 
were succeeded by the “Ambrosiani,” so Watts 
founded a “school” of writers, procreated by his vi- 
tality and inspired by his facility. Dr. Doddridge 
was head scholar and Anne Steele a good second. ~ 
Indeed her truly feminine emotionalism for a time 
deceived the elect into believing she was founding a 
school of her own. 

A long train of writers followed, happily for us 
not needing to be catalogued in a survey of the rela- 
tion of hymns to letters. You cannot get a sense of 
their number, and of their skill in reproducing Watts’ 
faults, from any book on Hymnology. You have to 
be a grim collector of their eighteenth century hymn 
books to understand how diligently they debased the 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 115 


current coinage of the kingdom with alloy much less 
costly to the coiner than poetry is, though of course 
without any thought of counterfeiting. 


VII. Tue Westrvan Hymns as Poetry 


The Wesleys were the first to contest the unlit- 
erary standard of the hymn Watts had set up. 

The brothers had been reared in the very atmos- 
phere of poetry. The love of it and the divine affla- 
tus itself moved a number of Samuel Wesley’s 
household; surely the most interesting family of 
modern England, till we come to the Rossettis and 
Archbishop Benson’s. 

Charles Wesley began writing hymns at once upon 
his conversion, and, one may say, wrote them spon- 
taneously until his death. We have John’s assur- 
ance that his own part in the vast bulk of the Wes- 
leyan hymnody was small. The translations from 
the German are certainly his, and remain the best 
ever made. They are so little appreciated that it is 
pleasant to remember that his ‘““Thou hidden love of 
God, whose height” was the prime favorite of so 
high a soul as Emerson: to hear that gentle voice 
chiding Moncure Conway, after service in his Lon- 
don chapel, for omitting even one verse of it. 

But the whole body of the Wesleyan hymnody 
may fairly be regarded as a joint enterprise. It was 
John who conceived the ideal of a Methodist poetry, 
who appointed his brother poet laureate of the 


116 Christian Hymnody 


Movement; who stood behind him as patron and 
beside him as redactor, and who superintended the 
printing. 

The hymns were a part of Wesley’s scheme of 
education. Behind the long succession of “Hymns 
and Sacred Poems,” hymn books, and the cheaper 
hymn-tracts that followed almost with the regular- 
ity of a periodical,—behind them all was the single 
purpose of elevating the humble minds of his fol- 
lowers by the inspirations of poetry, and the un- 
failing conviction that in his brother’s verse he had 
found the medium. The fullest expression of that 
purpose and conviction is the preface of the final 
Methodist Hymn Book of 1780; the largest collec- 
tion he made of his brother’s hymns: 

“May I be permitted to add a few words with re- 
gard to the poetry? Then I will speak to those who 
are judges thereof, with all freedom and unreserve. 
To these I may say, without offense. 1. In these 
Hymns there is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put 
in to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives. 2. 
Here is nothing turgid or bombast, on the one hand, 
nor low and creeping on the other. . . . 4. Here are 
(allow me to say) both the purity, the strength and 
the elegance of the ENGLISH language: and at the 
same time the utmost simplicity and _plainness, 
suited to every capacity. Lastly, I desire men of 
taste to judge (these are the only competent 
judges) whether there is not in some of the follow- 
ing verses, the true Spirit of Poetry; such as cannot 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 117 


be acquired by art and labour ; but must be the gift of 
nature. By labour a man may become a tolerable 
imitator of SPENSER, SHAKESPEAR, or MILTON, 
and may heap together pretty compound epithets, as 
PALE-EYED, WEAK-EYED, and the like. But unless he 
is born a Poet, he will never attain the genuine 
SPIRIT OF POETRY... . 

“When poetry thus keeps its place, as the hand- 
maid of piety, it shall attain not a poor perishable 
wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away.” 

This is John Wesley’s characteristically com- 
placent stand in the matter of the relation of the 
hymn to literature. He takes his place as fourth 
in the line of church leaders who have sought to ally 
hymnody with poetry: Leo X, Calvin, Wither, Wes- 
ley. 


Was Wesley justified in regarding his brother’s 
hymns as poetry? 

There is nothing conclusive in a suggestion that 
his judgment of poetry was capable of being warped 
by the pull of affection; as illustrated by his tribute 
to John Byrom’s verse. It is more to the point to 
ask if his judgment of his brother’s work did not in 
fact show a rather keen appreciation of just where 
the springs of poetry are to be found and as to what 
effects in us it is fitted to produce. 

If we apply to Charles Wesley’s hymns the tests 
of poetry in Mr. John Drinkwater’s sane and pleas- 
ant book, The Muse in Council,’ we can hardly fail 


118 Christian Hymnody 


to become aware of an unanticipated area of coinci- 
dence. 

The essential thing behind poetry, Mr. Drink- 
water tells us, its occasion as well as its spring, is 
“a most vital and personal experience.” The things 
“characteristic of fine poetry can be achieved by in- 
tense individual experience and from no other source 
whatever.” So far certainly Charles Wesley does 
not fail us. He had within him the springs of 
poetry in experiences as deep, as vital, as overwhelm- 
ing, as man’s can be. His hymns spring from dis- 
coveries of great truths passionately appropriated 
through a great experience working through feeling 
and passing into the imagination. 

Now “‘it is of the necessity that such experience 
finds, when it is most profound, to state itself in 
perfectly selected and ordered words,” that poetry 
comes into being. And its second test lies in the 
power of the poet’s “pregnant and living words” 
“to compel in us an ecstasy which is exactly a re- 
sponse to that ecstasy of his own.” It is question- 
able if any body of English verse ever met that test 
so fully as Wesley’s did. It was the hymns of 
Charles and not the sermons of John that reproduced 
in thousands of lives the deep experiences of the 
poet. They created a new type of spiritual experi- 
ence (and we still call it Wesleyan) that clothed the 
whole man with a mental and emotional mood, ex- 
alted, affectionate, ecstatic, tinged by mystical sug- 





Relation of the Hymn to Literature 119 


gestion, lit by an aroused imagination. They im- 
parted the touch of poetry to humble experiences. 


I am far from accusing Mr. Drinkwater of 
saying that Charles Wesley was a true poet. I am 
only applying or perhaps misapplying his canons of 
poetry to a candidate of my own selection. In any 
case they can apply only to a small proportion of the 
vast production (some 6,000 hymns). That is all 
his brother claims for the selections he made,—that 
the body of it is good verse and that some of it ex- 
hibits “the true Spirit of Poetry.” That fatal gift 
of facility led our poet precisely where it has led 
his betters in the poetic world, into a low country. 
And yet the surplusage conveys to me at least an 
implication of being written by a poet. Here is a 
copy of the 1780 hymn book. I open it at random at 
page 146, to an unregarded hymn (No. 143). And 
this is what catches my eye first: 


“Give me to bow with Thee my head, 
And sink into Thy silent. grave; 
To rest among Thy quiet dead: 
*Till Thou display Thy power to save: 
Thy resurrection’s power exert, 
And rise triumphant in my heart.” 


Was it not written by an artist’s hand? 


The time-spirit is dealing more kindly with the 
Wesleyan hymns than with Watts? The Church at 


120 Christian Hymnody 


large cherishes a considerable group of them among 
her spiritual resources: 


“Hark! how all the welkin rings:” 
“Love Divine, all loves excelling :” 
“Christ, whose glory fills the sky:” 
“Come, let us join our friends above:” 
“Come, Thou long-expected Jesus :” 
“All praise to Him who dwells in bliss” 
“Christ the Lord is risen to-day.” 


Any one might serve to justify Wesley’s estimate 
of his brother’s gift. But the fact that all of them 
are still acceptable in use does more. It contributes 
something toward testing the permanent value of 
his proposed alliance of hymnody with poetry. 


But I should like to test Wesley’s ideal by a single 
example he would regard as too extreme; by a lyric 
of his brother’s he would not admit into his hymn 
book. His reason is not far to seek. It lies exposed 
in the opening lines: 


“Jesu, Lover of my soul, 
Let me to Thy bosom fly.” 


Wesley’s early experiences among Moravians, 
whose hymnody fell into a fleshliness altogether ab- 
horrent, left a great repugnance to anything like 
fleshly imagery or terms of human endearment in 
prayer or song. The feeling is perfectly sound, and 
I share it to the full whenever I hear the popular 
“Safe in the arms of Jesus.” But what Wesley 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 121 


perhaps failed to consider is that the fleshly image 
and the endearment are perfectly permissible in 
poetry; which, as Milton put it, should be not only 
“simple” (single in conception) and “passionate,” 
but also “sensuous” (sensible) in its imagery. And 
that is precisely what happened in “Jesu, Lover of 
my soul.” 

It envelops us at once in the high atmosphere and 
transfiguring light of poetry, so that instinctively we 
lift the image and endearment to the height of spir- 
itual exaltation, where the earthly love becomes the 
express image of the heavenly. 

“Simple, sensuous, passionate.” And what art- 
istry! “The mere word-music,” as Professor Saints- 
bury has said,° “is fingered throughout in the most 
absolutely adequate manner.” The very opening 
word, “Jesu,” is not “churchly,” but marks a shrink- 
ing lest the hissing “s” mar the music. 

Now we are dealing with the best-loved hymn in 
the language; the favorite of learned and illiterate, 
high and humble. And why is it so? No critic 
urged its acceptance. Average Christians could not 
analyze its appeal. Its tenderness is a part of that, 
but hundreds of the Wesleyan hymns are equally 
tender. Its spiritual reality is a partial explanation, 
but the hymns in general have as much. And after 
due tribute to these qualities the suspicion remains 
that the secret of its appeal lies in a poetic beauty 
that the average man feels without analyzing it, and 


122 Christian Hymnody 


in a perfection of craftsmanship that makes him want 
to séng it simply because it awakens the spirit of 
song in him rather than a mood of reflection. 


From this single instance of an actual coincidence 
of poetry and popularity, there are no doubt a num- 
ber of conclusions we might draw without straining 
ourselves. 

There are two we have to draw: 

ist. That poetic beauty in a hymn is not necessa- 
rily a bar to spiritual edification, even among humble 
people. 

2nd. That the particular type of poetic beauty 
exhibited by the best loved hymn in the language is 
the lyrical type. The hymn is lyrical in the primary 
sense. It is a song and it evokes singing. 


Vil. Tur Unporetic Evancerticat HymMnopy 


Charles Wesley’s great lyric passed over to the 
Evangelical side of the Revival in Whitefield’s hymn 
book, and also, strangely enough, in Toplady’s. 
Toplady’s book was a sincere effort to embody his 
prefatory statement that anything designed for 
worship should keep in view that God is not only 
“the Gop of Truth” but also “of Elegance.’ He 
had some gift and practice of poetry, and his “Rock 
of Ages” is the one hymn on the Evangelical side 
worthy to parallel “Jesu, Lover of my soul.” ‘“Ele- 
gance”’ was not the divine attribute that especially 





Relation of the Hymn to Literature 123 


appealed to the Evangelical Revival or the Evan- 
gelical Movement that grew out of it. 

The deep experiences and spiritual yearnings fos- 
tered by the Revival might very well have proved 
to be springs of poetry and were inevitably the 
occasion of much verse. Newton, Fawcett, Berridge, 
Cennick, Hart, Williams, Haweis, Peronnet,—these 
are some of the familiar names, not of poets but of 
authors of useful hymns fostered by the Revival. 
They were mostly humble people who wrote for 
their kind, occasionally rising to a height of emo- 
tional eloquence not untouched by imagination, as 
in Cennick’s “Children of the heavenly King” and 
Williams’ ““Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” 

Cowper was the poet of the Revival, but his share 
in its hymnody was accidental, a tribute to. his 
friendship with John Newton. Many of his hymns 
are journey-work, produced at Newton’s request, to 
follow his sermons. ‘Oh, for a closer walk with 
God” is a genuine lyric, because born of an intense 
experience and wrought into melody. It was the 
singular virility of Newton’s contributions rather 
than the delicacy of Cowper’s that made their Olney 
Hymns a classic manual of the Evangelical disci- 
pline. 

There is, to say the least, a general feeling that 
the Evangelical point of view and the Evangelical 
handling of life tended to ignore “Elegance,” to di- 
vorce rather than to cement culture and religion. 
The Wesleyan and Evangelical view-points met to- 


124 Christian Hymnody 


gether in the spiritual intensity they invoked, but 
in their bearing upon the cultural aspects of life 
the advantage lay with the Wesleyan. 

It was of course the Evangelical side of the Re- 
vival, rather than the Wesleyan, that became the 
great influence in determining the hymnody of 
Evangelical communions in America; both in fore- 
casting its cultural relations and in furnishing its 
actual relations. It fixed, for instance, the basis of 
Presbyterian hymnody, when the extreme devotion 
to Watts had given away; a basis solid in piety 
rather than molded by art. If this Evangelical hym- 
nody was not poetic, it did sound that note of holi- 
ness which Oliver Wendell Holmes, a liberal even 
among Unitarians, caught and which he missed 
from so many later productions. 


The growth of general culture is now militating 
against the continued use of some of these eight- 
eenth century hymns, precisely as in that century it 
militated against the continued use of the rude metri- 
cal Psalms. The progress of culture in the mass of 
the people is extremely slow, and is now in a back- 
water: but viewing humanity long-wise it is per- 
ceptible. And any movement to keep our hymnody 
abreast of it may be viewed complacently, for it is 
inevitable. 

And thus the ground is laid for considering the 
Jast movement toward securing an alliance of hym- 
nody with poetry. 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 125 


IX. Montcomery’s CritiguE oF CuRRENT Hym- 
Nopy (1823) 


The accumulation of hymns, Wattsian, Wesleyan, 
Evangelical, awaited until 1823 the careful stock- 
taking by the poet James Montgomery in an essay 
prefixed to his Chréstéan Psalmist. 

“We have,” he says, “hymns without number,” 
but few “that lay claim to great literary merit.” 

Dr. Watts he characterizes as “‘one of the least of 
the poets of our country” but “the greatest name 
among hymn-writers,” since “it pleased God to make 
his ‘Divine Songs’ a more abundant and universal 
blessing than the verses of any uninspired penman 
that ever lived.” But the critic lamented much 
prosaic phrasing and those “rhymes worse than 
none” that encouraged the incompetent to imitate 
his faults. 

Montgomery put Charles Wesley next to Watts; a 
man of genius with an affluence of diction and splen- 
dor of coloring rarely surpassed in treating Chris- 
tian experience. His limitation is a “predilection to 
certain views of the gospel” that narrows his range. 
Addison’s four hymns are “pleasing.” But they neg- 
lect that celebration of God’s grace which constitutes 
the glory of Doddridge, deficient as he often was 
in poetry and eloquence. ‘Toplady “kindled his 
poetic torch at that of Wesley,” but showed “a pe- 
culiarly ethereal spirit” of his own. 

The school of Watts does not interest our critic. 


126 Christian Hymnody 


He praises Cowper’s poetry and Newton’s virility. 
Among the outpourings of the general choir he finds 
not a few which “refute the slander that hymns are 
necessarily the least intellectual or poetical speci- 
mens of literature.” “The God of Abram praise” 
is anoble ode. The short rescension of “Jerusalem, 
my happy home,” “by an unknown hand” (often 
since attributed to the critic himself) is “delight- 
rule 

Montgomery was a facile poet in the narrative 
and descriptive manner, and was, Allibone tells us, 
“a favored guest at every fireside, and the com- 
panion alike of childhood and old age.” ‘These 
words grew pathetic to me as I threaded the thousand 
pages of his “Poems” to find a passage or a lyric 
worthy a place in even a liberal-hearted anthology. 
But by some instinct Montgomery understood the 
hymn better than most. Two or three of his own 
would be his best contribution to a poetic anthology: 


“Forever with the Lord:” 
“Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire.” 


His estimate of what was then in stock was a fair 
appraisal. He finds a standing place for the hymn; 
that sometimes has been watered from the spring 
overflow of the stream of poetry on the one side, 
and never swamped by the wide waters of common- 
place on the other. 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 127 


X. Tuer Lyrica, MovEMENT IN HymMnopy 


This Christian Psalmist of Montgomery was an 
attempt to gather the best that had been done. Four 
years later, in 1827, two books appeared which 
looked forward rather than back, and caught the 
light of the newest movement in poetry which we are 
agreed to call the Romantic Revival. These were 
The Christian Year of John Keble and the Hymns 
of Bishop Heber. 

The Chréstian Year, in its meditative way, brings 
the feasts, fasts and offices of the Church of Eng- 
land within the transfigured world of nature and 
life created by Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats; 
and views them through an atmosphere of romance. 
Keble was not thinking of church hymns. Those for 
morning and evening we have taken from his book, 
however effective, are merely extracts from his 
poems. But he furnished the point of view, the at- 
mosphere, the manner, that make for poetry in many 
an English hymn. 

The other book, the Hymns of Reginald Heber, 
still stands four-square against the background 
sketched by Montgomery. It was the memorial of 
an effort thwarted and yet so effective as to entitle 
Heber to a fifth place in the succession of church 
leaders who have sought to ally hymnody with 
poetry. 

Early in life he had formed an estimate of the cur- 
rent hymns less favorable than Montgomery’s. He 


128 Christian Hymnody 


then conceived the bold scheme of preparing a 
Church of England hymnal in which every number 
should be a lyrical poem. He sought his models and 
helpers in the current school of romantic poets. His 
affiliations were not with Wordsworth’s philoso- 
phizing. They were with the group led by Walter 
Scott; with his sense of the picturesqueness of olden 
times, with the romance of adventure in Southey, 
with the ringing melodies of Campbell and Byron 
and Moore. He appealed to Scott, Southey, Mil- 
man, and other friends for contributions to his book, 
and to the bishops for its authorization. Most of 
the poets failed him and the bishops hesitated. The 
book was never printed by him. | 

After Heber’s death John Murray brought out his 
Hymns in the wide-margined octavo bound in gray 
boards that was the recognized format of Byron and 
Murray’s other poets. Inwardly its distinction lay 
in the fifty-seven contributions of Heber, already a 
venerated figure, and twelve of Henry Hart Mil- 
man, then at the height of his fame as a writer of 
poetic drama. 

Everything about the manner of publication was 
intended to suggest poetry. It was a recommenda- 
tion of hymnody to high and dry churchmen dis- 
posed to decry it and a challenge to London literary 
circles. It was a hymnody with the spirit, the free 
thythms and ringing melodies of the new romantic 
poetry. 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 129 


There were no precedents for such picturesque 
hymns as: 


“Hosanna to the living Lord!” 

“From Greenland’s icy mountains :” 

“The Son of God goes forth to war:” 

“Brightest and best of the sons of the morning:” 

“By cool Siloam’s shady rill :” 

“When through the torn sail the wild tempest is streaming.” 


Some of Milman’s might have been songs from his 
dramas: 


“The chariot! The chariot! its wheels roll on fire :” 
“Ride on! ride on in majesty!” 

“Bound upon the accursed tree :” 

“When our heads are bowed with woe.” 


The point is not that these lyrics were more poetic 
than the Wesleyan but that they were more aggres- 
sively so: as if Wesley had aimed to bring the hymn 
into the domain of poetry, and Heber had aimed to 
bring current ideals of poetry into the domain of 
hymnody. 

He effected no revolution in sacred song as Watts 
had done, but rather injected his ideals to work as 
leaven. What his book accomplished was through 
the incorporation of every one of his own and several 
of Milman’s lyrics into current books of various com- 
munions. Once there their contrast with their more 
drab surroundings could hardly fail to raise the ques- 
tion whether it might not be well that this remainder 
of the hymnody should likewise be lyrical. 


130 Christian Hymnody 


Heber’s hymns acted as a precedent, an encour- 
agement toward a change in the literary standard 
pretty generally. I think it is fair to say that they 
are back of the very recent movement appropriating 
lyric poems even when it involves more or less of 
departure from the traditional hymn-pattern. Thus 
the Scottish Presbyterians led the way in adopting 
Tennyson’s ‘Sunset and evening star’: the Amer- 
ican Methodists in adopting Lanier’s “Into the 
woods my Master went’: the Students’ Christian 
Movement in adopting William Blake’s 


“And did those feet in ancient time 
Walk upon England’s mountains green?” 


Such widely separated instances of what is com- 
ing to look like a common lyrical impulse are the 
more interesting because not concerted. Probably 
they suggest the direction in which our rapidly 
changing hymnody is pointed. But even so it would 
be premature, certainly, to claim at the present time 
that the English hymn is literature. There are in 
fact several interests which are not concerned that 
it should be or are actively in opposition to literary 
ideals. 

There are, first of all, the strong pull of use and 
wont in the case of an inherited hymnody which was 
not framed by literary motives, and the more tender 
appeals of personal associations with familiar words. 
It is, however, also true that those who gauge hymns 
by old associations are continuously passing away. 


_———_— = ae 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 131 


I recall the venerable senior of those engaged with 
The Hymnal of 1895 pleading with tears for the re- 
tention of certain hymns that the immense majority 
of the present-day generation never heard of. 

A second disturbing force is the downward pull of 
a Sunday school hymnody not brought under edu- 
cational ideals and discipline. It is left very largely 
under the leadership that can be procured most 
cheaply. As things stand the songs taught through 
the most impressible years not only fail to familiar- 
ize our children with great hymns, but actually cul- 
tivate a taste for things that are unworthy. As the 
children take their places in the church the tastes 
and habits that have really been thrust upon them 
protest against acquiring a different and more ele- 
vated standard of praise. 

The undeniable liking of the American people 
for light and catchy music readily coéperates with 
these graduates of the Sunday school in bringing into 
the church the kindred examples of what are called 
evangelistic songs. It is quite true that the words 
set to these melodies are seldom more than a verbal 
accompaniment to the tunes themselves. Only for 
some special ineptitude or on some special occasion 
does anybody give much thought to them. 

There was such an occasion when “Beautiful Isle 
of Somewhere” was announced as part of the official 
program for the funeral of a President of the United 
States. The same song was included in the order of 
exercises at a vast rally of Sunday school forces at 


132 Christian Hymnody 


Trenton in 1911. The then Governor of New Jer- 
sey, who was to occupy President McKinley’s chair, 
interrupted the harmony of that occasion by calling 
attention to the extreme silliness of the words, and 
uttering an indignant protest against the whole 
method of the Sunday school interests which made 
such inane sentimentalities not only possible but 
officially appointed. 

This occasion was exceptional in the prominence 
it gave to the words of one of the current songs. 
But the words are fairly representative of the only 
hymnody in use among considerable sections of 
church people, and whose popularity makes it a dis- 
turbing force. Only those engaged in the practical 
work of making hymn books are in a position to 
know the pressure brought to bear upon them to 
lower the cultural standard of church song. 


XI. Tur Hymn as RELATED TO POETRY 


Every man of letters loves The Book of Psalms: 
not one praises the Metrical Psalter: all view the 
modern hymnal in a spirit of criticism. 


The precedent was set, when hymns as distin- 
guished from Psalms were new, by the great Dr. 
Johnson; who viewed them with an extreme aver- 
sion, partly because they were new and partly be- 
cause they were loved by dissenters. 

The famous passage from his Life of Waller is 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 133 


too long to quote. Its substance is that every at- 
tempt to animate devotion by poetry has failed. 
We get nothing but “pious verse,” useful only to 
assist the memory and please the ear. This failure 
is inevitable because intercourse between the soul 
and God is in a region beyond the scope of poetry, 
which loses its luster and power when it tries to 
decorate something more excellent than itself. Ex- 
periences of repentance, faith, supplication, thanks- 
giving, demand an expression the simplest and most 
unadorned. 

All this seems rather empty of meaning till it 
dawns on us that Johnson shared with his time a 
definition of poetry long since outgrown. He thinks 
of art as opposed to simplicity. He thinks of poetry 
as the art of treating a theme by way of amplifying 
it, of hanging decorations on it, of recommending it 
by pleasing figures. So long as that definition per- 
sisted, Dr. Johnson’s huge shadow lay heavy on the 
hymns he detested and extended over the whole area 
of religious verse. To our modern notions the criti- 
cism has no value. As Dr. Schelling puts it,’ “The 
lyrist may sing the raptures of a pure soul in com- 
munion with God, or the apples of Sodom that turn 
to dust and bitterness between the teeth of the lost 
sinner. . . . There can be no limits set to art.” 


The prevalent modern criticism is headed by the 
great name of Matthew Arnold. As an apostle of 
culture the subject was much in his mind. His 


134 Christian Hymnody 


feeling is expressed as definitely as anywhere in his 
Literature and Dogma: 

“Hymns, such as I know them, are a sort of com- 
position which I do not at all admire. . . . I regret 
their prevalence and popularity among us. Taking 
man in his totality and in the long run, bad music 
and bad poetry, to whatever good and useful pur- 
pose a man may often manage to turn them, are in 
themselves mischievous and deteriorating to him. 
Somewhere and somehow, and at some time or other, 
he has to pay a penalty and to suffer a loss for taking 
a delight in them.” 

Before brushing this aside why not note that 
Arnold is merely applying to the main body of our 
hymns very much the same words that most re- 
fined and thoughtful Christians are applying to cur- 
rent “evangelistic” songs.® 

May we not go a little farther with our critic? 
Is it not true of some of our church hymns that they 
fail to fulfill their high mission simply because they 
are not “good poetry’? Poetry has a singular prop- 
erty not only to arouse our dull feelings but actually 
to reproduce in us something of the high experience 
of the poet himself. Are we not prudent in coveting 
such a creative gift for our hymns? 

Why is it lacking so often, even from those 
written by poets? Coleridge said of some of his own 
work that it was not poetry but thoughts expressed 
in verse. Apply that distinction to our hymns: for 
example to those of William Cullen Bryant. Every 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 135 


conscientious editor of an American hymnal must 
have scanned the hymns which the first of our poets 
to win distinction thought it worth while to gather 
into a volume, printed twice. But he scans them to 
little purpose. Bryant himself has explained their 
motive and origin. The earlier were written at the 
solicitation of Miss Sedgwick, who wished the rising 
poet represented in a new hymn book. ‘The later 
were furnished at the request of some friend or com- 
mittee to give distinction to a corner-stone laying or 
ordination or installation or what not. They have 
no poetic experience behind them. They are simply 
“thoughts for the occasion” expressed in verse. And 
that is why they fail us. 

The case is not very different with the hymns pre- 
pared with the express purpose of edifying us: with 
the homiletical verse of Watts or Davies, that in the 
end remains not poetry but sermons; or the hymns 
leading up to a moralizing conclusion, like the Sun- 
day school stories we used to give the children. It 
is regrettable that pastors continue to make such 
large use of them, doubtless as mere “‘fillers” or to 
illustrate a sermon-theme. For these uninspired 
verses have hardly retained their old capacity for 
teaching and admonition. They do not penetrate 
the crust of spiritual apathy that is part of the price 
the average Christian pays for sharing the compli- 
cations of modern life. They do not arouse the con- 
gregation to spiritual idealism and holy imaginings. 
They do not light a candle in the modern heart. 


136 Christian Hymnody 


Now, if these things are true: 

(a) If Johnson’s dictum that hymns are theo- 
retically outside the sphere of poetry is unwar- 
ranted ; 

(b) If Arnold’s criticism that our hymns are é 
fact outside the sphere of poetry is wholly justified 
in respect of the “evangelistic” hymnody and to a 
certain extent in the church hymnody; 

(c) If there are certain properties of poetry that 
make it capable of adding something to spiritual 
beauty and encouraging spiritual vigor ; 

(d) If the Wesleyan hymns have demonstrated 
that the lyrical type of poetic beauty has the par- 
ticular appeal to Christian feeling that awakens the 
spirit of song; 

Then we seem to find solid ground for a convic- 
tion that the present-day lyrical impulse that is 
affecting our church hymnody is turned at all events 
in the right direction; that in following it we are 
really seeking the old trail which Calvin opened and 
which the Wesleys extended. 


The lyrical movement no doubt has its own 
hazard, and it has two very definite limitations. 

The hazard is implicit in the very motive of hymn 
singing; the heightening of religious emotion. The 
danger is of mistaking sugary sentiment for true 
feeling and its rhetorical expression in “soft luxuri- 
ous flow” for true poetry. 

The limitations of the movement are those sug- 


Relation of the Hymn to Literature 137 


gested once for all by St. Paul, the first critic of 
Christian hymns and obviously the patron saint of 
this lectureship. “TI will sing,” he says, “with the 
Spirit”: thus defining hymnody for always as a 
spiritual function. The Christian hymn, that is to 
say, even though it force a passage through the 
needle’s eye of literary criticism, must always stand 
apart from the poetry that is dominated by purely 
esthetic ideals. It must compass spiritual beauty 
first of all: happy if, seeking the Kingdom of God 
first, His gift of poetry shall be added to it. 

The other limitation St. Paul expressed by saying, 
“T will sing with the understanding also.” For, if 
the spiritual function of hymnody is to extend into 
a social function, the hymns must be kept within 
the understanding of those who do the singing. 
Simplicity is not only a tradition but a principle 
of congregational hymnody. It does not follow that 
church songs should be so commonplace and obvious 
that the inattentive man, though a fool, need not 
err therein. It is better if they teach something we 
had not thought about or admonish us of something 
we had forgotten in life’s rush. 

At the worst St. Paul offers the alternate of “an 
interpretation.” It is enough if there be an inter- 
preter in the pulpit, ready and patient to disclose 
deeper meanings and hidden beauties beneath words 
that however simple are never as transparent as we 
suppose to an average Christian. 


138 Christian Hymnody 


“A primrose by a river’s brim 
A yellow primrose [is] to him.” 


At the same time there is no place in popwiar hym- 
nody for verse overweighted by philosophical 
thought, flamboyant with decoration, complicated 
by self-conscious ingenuity, or soaring to mystic 
heights that present no foothold for companionship. 
When such hymns occur in our books they are to be 
regarded as the indiscretions of an editor. 


These two properties of the Christian lyric, spir- 
ituality and simplicity, are differential. They hedge 
the hymn not only from verse as a whole but even 
from the main body of religious verse. Each limi- 
tation will perhaps continue to act upon many of 
our poets as a deterrent and upon many of our critics 
as a taboo. 

There is, however, no valid reason why poetry 
should not concern itself with the deepest feelings 
and highest aspirations of the spirit of man. There 
is no reason why hymn writing should not be recog- 
nized as a legitimate type of lyrical art. There is 
no reason why the poet’s imagination and the poet’s 
craftsmanship should not bring fresh offerings of 
strength and beauty into the sanctuary of God 
through the medium of the modern hymn as well as 
through the ancient Psalm. 


LECTURE FOUR 
THE CONTENTS OF THE HYMN 





LECTURE FOUR 
THE CONTENTS OF THE HYMN 


The themes proper for a hymn, and the things it 
should contain or omit, depend altogether upon the 
theory we happen to hold of its function. And 
from the viewpoint of the various theories that have 
obtained our subject is best approached. 


I. A Hymnopy oF PRAISE 


And first the theory that the hymn’s special func- 
tion ts the praise of God. 

This was St. Augustine’s, expressed in the first 
formal definition already quoted: ‘Praise of God in 
song is calleda hymn. It must be praise.’ 

The definition is still classical. Its echo is heard 
most clearly, oddly enough, in communions that are 
least liturgical. In them the hymnody is still “the 
service of praise.’ The long Psalmody Contro- 
versy was designated then and since as dealing with 
“the subject-matter of praise.” 

The practice of the Church never tallied with the 
theory. It accepted the Psalter, which contains 
much more than the praise-songs of Israel, but also 
enlarged it with songs of spiritual experience. The 
metrical hymns of Ambrose are more than praise.* 


Those who introduced varying “human composures” 
141 


142 Christian Hymnody 


in the eighteenth century retained the Psalter for 
praise and appropriated the hymn to express evan- 
gelical convictions. The modern hymnal covers 
every type of religious expression, even the sigh of 
religious despondency, just as the Psalter did. 

Nevertheless it remains true that reverence is the 
beginning of religion and gratitude the fount of 
Christian song; that St. Paul enclosed his “spiritual 
odes” in an atmosphere of thanksgiving; and that 
the hymn of praise is still the highest type of our 
church song. 

Some recent hymnals, PNG with many 
themes, tend to diminish songs of praise. The trend 
of their thought is away from a God above the 
world to a God immanent in the world and closer to 
life than breathing. The historic hymns that cele- 
brate His infinite majesty lose spiritual reality to 
minds that pass through phases of mystical com- 
munion with God to what seems like coalescence. 

Probably if all church song were praise, the praise 
would grow fulsome; certainly it would grow repeti- 
tious. Yet it has a high office all its own. Its loss 
would silence the leading note in the chord of de- 
votion. Nothing but a “Sanctus” fitly anticipates 
those songs of the ransomed Church in Revelation. 
{ have sometimes wondered whether it was his feel- 
ing for pure religion or his feeling for poetry that 
led Tennyson to regard Heber’s “Holy! Holy! 
Holy! Lord God Almighty” as the greatest of Eng- 
lish hymns. 


The Contents of the Hymn 143 


Il. A Hymwnopy or EpIFICATION 


A second theory is that the hymn’s special func- 
tion ts the edification of the singers. And so far as 
praise has a reaction of uplift the song of praise re- 
tains a place. 

It is a theory that particularly commends itself to 
a generation much more keen for efficiency than wor- 
ship. And it is quite certainly within the limits of 
St. Paul’s charter. From this point of view the con- 
tent of the hymn is: 

1. An embodiment of some Christian truth; and 
hence the Doctrinal Hymn with its teaching power; 

2. An embodiment of the spiritual interpreta- 
tion of life; with its office of arousing spiritual 


feeling. 


1. The Doctrinal Hymn 


(a) Tue Doctrinat Mnemonic. In dealing 
with the disturbance at Colosse, St. Paul put first 
the power of song to teach Christian truths. It 
would be hard to believe him so short-sighted as to 
neglect furnishing the Colossians with rhythmical 
formulas of things a Christian must know for his 
soul’s health that could be set to familiar cantilla- 
tions. 

That is the doctrinal hymn in crudest form, the 
doctrinal mnemonic. When the Reformation came 
all the leaders except Zwingli put formulas of the 


144 Christian Hymnody 


faith into simple metrical forms. The once famil- 
iar tune “Commandments” is the melody to which 
Calvin set the Ten Commandments in his Genevan 
Psalter. And truly a wonderful thing is verse in 
its appeal to human instincts, in the power of its 
rhythmic march, its cadences and rhymes, to grip our 
minds and possess our memory. 

We think of mnemonic hymns as bygone or as 
milk for babes. But there is no more perfect speci- 
men than one in Cardinal Newman’s Dream of 
Gerontius, which Dr. Sanday has included among 
the hymns for the University of Oxford. It begins: 


“Firmly I believe and truly 
God is Three and God is One; 
And I next acknowledge duly 
Manhood taken by the Son.” 


(b) Tue Divactic Hymn. It is a step upward 
from the mnemonic to the hymn that aims to con- 
vey doctrine didactically. 

The most conspicuous modern advocate and pro- 
ducer of didactic hymns is Christopher Wordsworth, 
Bishop of Lincoln, in his The Holy Year, 1862. 
We have still with us several survivals of his ‘“‘ve- 
hicles of sound doctrine” ; 

“O day of rest and gladness;” tracing the origins 
and functions of the Christian Sunday: 

“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord!”; a justification of the 
“Sanctus” and catalogue of the various groups of 
singers who employ it: 

*O Lord of heaven and earth and sea;” which in 


The Contents of the Hymn 145 


its full form enumerates the differing types of the 
divine gifts as the rationale and measure of our 
own. 

None of these greatly warms the heart, but they 
are exceptional in being frankly didactic without 
quenching the spirit of song. For the weakness of 
didactic hymns is their didacticism. Our very 
nerves protest when we are asked to sémg, and then 
rising find ourselves back in the school-room with a 
lesson in sound doctrine to be recited. 

The success of The Holy Year, most likely, en- 
couraged Samuel J. Stone, four years later, to under- 
take an explanation of the Apostles’ Creed to the 
poor of his flock at Windsor in a series of hymns. 
The one now most familiar, ‘“The Church’s One 
Foundation,” explains the article on “The Holy 
Catholic Church,” and in method is rigidly didactic. 
Each line is a statement from the Bible, accumu- 
lated with an aim of justifying from Scripture the 
high Anglican doctrine of the Church; its divine 
authority, its sacraments, its essential unity, its com- 
munion of saints, etc. If this didactic method is 
what makes the hymn so effective among Christians 
of all types, then it is not only the peak of didactic 
hymnody, but distinctly a recommendation of didac- 
ticism. 

My own impression would be that the hymn owes 
its power neither to its method nor its manner, but 
to an intense conviction and passionate loyalty 
written between the lines. As if a teacher were 


146 Christian Hymnody 


describing the features of his country to a class that 
were learning most of their geography from the 
thrill in their teacher’s voice. 


(c) THe Doctrrinat Lyric. And this forecasts 
the only type of doctrinal hymn which fully attains 
spiritual reality and whose teaching power far sur- 
passes the formally didactic,—the hymn, that is to 
say, which presents doctrine lyrically, as mediated (I 
was about to say, filtered) through personal ex- 
perience. 

The special sphere of hymnody lies of course in 
the feelings rather than the understanding. The 
distinction between a catechism and a doctrinal 
hymnody is (or ought to be) that the first states 
doctrine with precision, the other in terms of feel- 
ing. The true hymn is conceived in feeling and 
aims to evoke it. 

But then feeling, other than mere excitement, has 
its root in understanding. The hymn that cometh 
up like a flower and whose fragrance fills the sanctu- 
ary is always rooted in some doctrine; first appre- 
hended and then transmuted through personal ex- 
perience into a personal conviction. I believe, 
therefore have I spoken: but it is the feelings of the 
heart that make my words melodious. 

A great hymn, I venture to think, is the fullest 
embodiment of Christian doctrine. For a great 
hymn is “the echo of a great soul” giving lyrical ex- 
pression to truth apprehended through a high ex- 


The Contents of the Hymn = 147 


perience, in words that both use the common speech 
and transcend it. 


This view would be confirmed, I am sure, by a 
review in chronological sequence of the hymn books 
of our English-speaking Protestantism. It was at 
the close of some such conspectus in a former Stone 
Lecture that the late Professor John De Witt wrote 
me: 

“Really it awakens in me the suspicion that there 
is no better point of view from which to study the 
development and the reaches of Christian belief 
than that offered by hymnody. This is not strange, 
for after all beliefs of the first rate in influence re- 
ceive, and, I have the impression, always have re- 
ceived their best and final embodiment in poetry, 
and especially in lyric poetry.” 

Poetry is not of course a suitable medium for the 
precise definitions that find place in a Confession. 
There is an illustration in Heber’s great hymn. The 
opening, “Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Al- 
mighty” gives perfect poetical expression to the doc- 
trine of the Trinity. The closing line, “God in 
Three Persons, blessed Trinity,” instead of attaining 
a poetic climax, is not poetry at all but simply a 
reversion to Nicene definition. What poetry can do 
for doctrine is to humanize it, to set it in the light 
of imagination and to clothe it with feeling. And it 
is this handling of doctrine that has made the church 
hymn book the actual creed of countless thousands 


148 Christian Hymnody 


of Christians who have never so much as had the 
historic church confessions in their hands. I think 
this is still measurably true, though probably our 
hymns have never been sung so thoughtlessly as now, 
owing to that singular but prevalent gift of in- 
attention so conspicuous just now in public worship.* 
This gift of inattention, so far as hymnody is con- 
cerned, has been greatly fostered, no doubt, by the 
quick and rattling melodies and the rapid verse 
which the young people are trained to sing. In the 
meantime the teaching power of great hymns re- 
mains, an asset of the Church hardly included in 
the inventory of her educational resources, and in 
her educational practice generally disregarded. We 
ought, I think, to feel that the subordination of the 
hymn book to the catechism as a means of instruc- 
tion is a Scottish inheritance rather than a counsel 
of prudence. Certainly it is opposed to the best 
pedagogy, and to a reasonable psychology. 


In this place, at least, it ought to be sufficient to 
quote from the preface of Dr. Archibald Alexander’s 
long-forgotten hymn book: * 

“Evangelical hymns are peculiarly suited to be 
the vehicle of gospel truth to the young and ig- 
norant. It is a fact that unlettered Christians retain 
in their minds more of the gospel in the words of 
the spiritual songs which they are accustomed to 
sing than in any other form, and children can per- 
haps be taught the truths of religion in this way, 


The Contents of the Hymn 149 


more effectually than in any other . . . the under- 
standing is reached with most certainty through the 
feelings of the heart.” 

Dr. Alexander’s words were printed a century 
ago, and it is quite possible that the Church’s failure 
to act on them may bear some part in the net results 
of a Christian education that at a century’s end has 
left the body of young people in what the chaplains 
of the Great War and the instructors in our colleges 
are agreed to call an astonishing ignorance of the 
very rudiments of Christian doctrine. I do not envy 
the man who may feel the call to conduct the rising 
generation through a course of systematic theology, 
addressed to minds so hostile to authority and so 
careless of discipline. But I do cherish a hope of 
reaching them, more insidiously, through the avenue 
of great Christian song that lifts us up from the 
levels of materialism almost in spite of ourselves to 
an atmosphere of spiritual feeling in which truth 
may be discerned. 


2. The Hymn of the Spiritual Life 


Christian doctrine lays the ground for a spiritual 
conception of life. And so the teaching hymn of St. 
Paul’s injunction is coupled with the hymn of the 
spiritual life wherewith we ‘‘admonish one another.” 
Those who interpret the phrase as “rebuking one 
another” travesty the whole subject and turn the 
fellowship of song into a scolding-bee. If we take 


150 Christian Hymnody 


the literal meaning of the Greek verb, “to put in 
mind of,” then it complements “‘teaching” and fills 
out the twofold function of the Hymn of Edifica- 
tion: 

1. To instruct us in the things we need to learn; 

2. To bring to our remembrance the things that 
get crowded out of life: its atmosphere of grace, 
the heavenly call, the Christian ideals and sanctions, 
the incentives to brotherly service, the beauty of 
holiness, the hope of heaven,—in short, the spiritual 
conception of life. 

These hymns of life fill the larger part in many of 
our hymnals. An editor’s custom is to group them 
by subject, repentance, faith, love, hope, etc. But 
there are no partitions in the soul, where faith and 
love flow mingled through. The partitions of the 
hymn book are only a rough and ready attempt to 
classify by hand.” 

We shall get at the contents of the hymns of life 
a bit more scientifically if we group them by their 
method. 


(a) THe SermMonic Hymn, whose method is 
homiletical. Very likely it includes doctrinal mat- 
ter and almost certainly some exegesis, but it is ser- 
monic because the value of its observations lies in 
the application of them. It is a sermonette in verse. 

In the history of English hymnody the sermonic 
hymn was the first comer, the prototype. The large 
majority of Dr. Watts’ hymns (I should think) are 


ats re 
a 


The Contents of the Hymn = 151 


sermonic. Each carries its text as well as its theme 
at its head, and most of them proceed in the hom- 
ijletic manner: 


“Behold what wondrous grace!” 
“Mistaken souls that dream of heaven :” 
“Who hath believed Thy word:” 
“Why should the children of a king:” 
“How sad our state by nature is.” 


Homilies all, from text to application! Naturally 
so, because among the dissenters, for whom Watts 
wrote them, the homiletical ideal of worship dom- 
inated everything. 

Inevitably so with the followers of Watts, who 
wrote their hymns under the sway of feeling aroused 
in composing a sermon; turning its points into verse 
for the very purpose of getting it sung at the ser- 
mon’s close by the congregation who had heard it. 
The manuscript draft sufficed for the purpose, be- 
cause the singing proceeded line by line as the pre- 
centor read it out. 

All the hymns of Doddridge and President Davies 
of Princeton were made and used after this fashion, 
and not printed during their lives, unless the sermon 
itself happened to appear in pamphlet form. 

The contents of the sermonic hymn are as wide 
as life: 


The gospel hymn, “Not all the blood of beasts :” 

The hymn of invitation, “Return, O wanderer, return :” 

The call to repentance, “Deep in the dust before Thy 
throne :” 


152 Christian Hymnody 


The hymn of confession, “Sin, like a venomous disease :” 

The hymn of faith, “Faith is the brightest evidence :” 

The hymn of consolation, “Why do we mourn departing 
friends :” 

The call to battle, “Am I a soldier of the cross:” 

The warning, “How short and hasty is our life:” 

The last call, “Death! ’tis a melancholy day.” 


The sermonic hymn had a great day and to some 
extent survives. It is curious to note the revival of 
a rather pronounced homiletical method in the hymns 
of what is called the new social gospel. Our friends 
outside have caught not only the pulpit graces but 
even the pulpit twang. 


(b) THe Hymn or Personat EXPERIENCE, 
which substitutes example for precept. The singer 
tells his own inward experience, his spiritual mood, 
his actual discoveries, his personal privileges. And 
these range all the way from the first joy at finding 
Christ in Bonar’s exquisite “I heard the voice of 
Jesus say,” through Charles Wesley’s experience of 
temptation in “Jesu, Lover of my soul,” to the 
heights of consecration in Matheson’s “O Love that 
wilt not let me go.” 

These are known as the “I and my” hymns, in 
which the singer speaks for himself as against the 
“We” hymns, in which he strives to express the 
mind of the collective Church. 

The particular object of marking this distinction 
is to clear the ground for a motion to exclude the 


we SS 


The Contents of the Hymn 153 


“I” hymns from public worship altogether. And 
the original proposer, or at least the first one with 
influence enough to make his motion heard, was 
Bishop Wordsworth in his The Holy Year we have 
already looked into. He supports it by two propo- 
sitions: 

(1) The impropriety, the egotism, the imper- 
tinence of any one person obtruding his personal 
feelings and experiences, and worst of all, his boast 
of special privileges, as a medium for the public 
prayer and praise of God’s people. 

I tried to show in the first lecture that St. Paul 
made individuality of the very essence of hymnody 
because it is a spiritual function, and only by singing 
one to another made into common song. If songs 
of the spiritual life are to have any part in our hym- 
nody, what can they be except songs of some soul 
who wrote of what life meant to him? There is no 
other spiritual experience than individual experi- 
ence; no songs that enshrine it that do not really 
begin with “I.” It is personality, here as generally, 
that makes a lyric inspiring. 

When the long-awaited Presbyterian Hymnal ap- 
peared in 1874, the editor had transposed Mrs. 
Steele’s “Father, whate’er of earthly bliss” into a 
“We” hymn: “Give us a calm and thankful heart,” 
and soon. The hymn was a favorite then, and the 
protest so immediate and so general that the pub- 
lishers felt compelled to alter the stereotype plate. 


154 Christian Hymnody 


(ii) The bishop’s other ground for suppressing 
“IT and my” hymns was their contrast to those of 
the early Church :— 

“One of the most striking differences between 
Ancient and Modern Hymns is this,—that the for- 
mer are always objective, the latter are very often 
subjective. The former are distinguished by self- 
forgetfulness, the latter by self-consciousness.” 
And so on at some length; illustrating the offensive 
hymns not only by Watts’ “When I can read my 
title clear,” but by Wesley’s “Jesu, Lover of my 
soul.” 

How often, one wonders, have the above words 
been quoted? In how many books incorporated? 
They lie before me, as I write, in the current number 
of a periodical cited by a Presbyterian clergyman as 
final evidence of the decadence of our hymnody. 

But what ground of fact have they to stand on? 
The Psalms were the first hymns of the Church: the 
evangelical canticles perhaps next. Is the 51st 
Psalm purely objective? And would “The Lord is 
my Shepherd” be improved by remodeling into a 
“We” hymn? But, the bishop says, the “I and 
“my” of the Psalms are ‘“‘words of the Holy Spirit 
Himself speaking by a Prophet and King” collec- 
tively for the whole body of the faithful. If so, 
what the Spirit actually did was to inspire an in- 
dividual to voice his personal trust, and then to set 
a precedent for the collective use of his “I and my” 
hymn. And the same thing must be said of Simeon’s 


The Contents of the Hymn 155 


canticle, ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant de- 
part in peace,” which is not notably objective. 
In the later hymns of the Latin Church, 


“Jesu, dulcis memoria,” 
“O Deus, ego amo Te,” 
*‘Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas,” 


the bishop sees a decline from Catholicity, a tend- 
ency to individualism, an idiosyncrasy of Mediev- 


alism “anticipating the peculiar characteristics of 
Methodism.” 


The mere fact that such objections have been 
proposed and are somewhat widely held ought to 
serve not so much by putting the Church into an 
attitude of defense as by reminding her that the 
only way she can justify the admission of these ly- 
tics of individual experience into her public song 
is by a somewhat anxious scrutiny of the lyrics them- 
selves in the special interests of popular edification. 
Of any given hymn of Christian experience in pub- 
lic use it is not enough to say that the author was a 
saint, his experience a real one and his lyric a sin- 
cere record. It remains to inquire if his experience 
was edifying :— 

(1) There és the test of spiritual wholesomeness. 
A study of the spiritual diaries of good people, 
such as Mrs. Burr has made,° reveals a morbid strain 
veining the experiences of elect souls, occasioned 
sometimes by bad health, sometimes by inherent 


156 Christian Hymnody 


weakness of the spiritual condition as revealed by 
contact with life. Such tendencies came to the sur- 
face certainly in the exciting atmosphere of the 
great Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century, 
whose hymnody, so abundant and so spiritual, hap- 
pens to be a main source of our own. 

The spiritual writhings, the blackness of despair, 
the unfitness for life, which so many of the converts 
were called to pass through are somewhat appalling 
even in the reading. In the case of John Cennick 
it is only “delicacy” that forbears from regarding 
his state of mind as deranged. Happily this does 
not color his cheerful hymn, “Children of the heav- 
enly King.” But it does suggest a scrutiny of the 
large body of his hymnody. The poet Cowper, an- 
other convert, is the typical case of a beautiful soul 
struggling with congenital melancholia, spurred by 
the revival excitements at Olney into violent insan- 
ity. In reading his most touching hymn, “Oh, for a 
closer walk with God,” I do not need to inquire how 
much is of grace and how much of melancholia, but 
I wonder sometimes if the promiscuous use of such 
tender regrets does really minister to the public 
health or only encourage private moods of spiritual 
depression. 

We will all agree, I suppose, that the undoubted 
power these lyrics of personal experience have over 
us comes from their gift of suggestion, greatly aug- 
mented as it is by the witchery of rhythm and often 
by hallowed associations. 


The Contents of the Hymn = 157 


This being acknowledged, the Christian Church 
ought to be willing to listen at least to what the 
new Psychology has to say of this potent gift that 
lies in her hands to use to the best effect; and so 
far as she finds the ground firm and the air clear, 
she ought to apply its teachings to her own hym- 
nody of edification. 

I venture therefore to quote from Evelyn Under- 
hill’s The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day: 


“This tendency of the received suggestion to work its 
whole content for good or evil within the subconscious mind, 
shows the importance which we ought to attach to the tone 
of a religious service, and how close too many of our popu- 
lar hymns are to what one might call psychological sin; 
stressing as they do a childish weakness and love of shelter 
and petting, a neurotic shrinking from full human life, a 
morbid preoccupation with failure and guilt. Such hymns 
make devitalizing suggestions, adverse to the health and 
energy of the spiritual life; and are all the more powerful 
because they are sung collectively and in rhythm, and are 
cast in an emotional mold.” 


Miss Underhill in a footnote goes on to apply her 
teachings to what she is unkind enough to call 
“Hymns of the Weary Willie type”; hymns of an 
experience that has grown tired and is disillusioned: 


“O Paradise! O Paradise! 
Who doth not crave for rest 2?” 


(ii) There ts even a test of cheerfulness by which 
our hymns may well be tried, notably the hymns of 
that Great Revival, but also, as a recent rereading 
convinces me, the evening hymns we sing as those 


158 Christian Hymnody 


shadows deepen that are so suggestive of the shadow 
of death. 

The shadow of death lies very heavily on the 
hymnody of the Evangelical Revival. There hangs 
in my study an embroidered sampler dated 1788, in 
which ‘Ann Smith, aged 11,” has lettered in various 
silks the text of Dr. Watts’ “Hark! from the tombs 
a doleful sound.” ‘The piety that set such a task for 
childhood was an inheritance from the Revival in 
which Charles Wesley did not hesitate to offer the 
Methodists a hymn addressed to a corpse, “Ah! 
lovely appearance of death; and a great number of 


Evangelical hymn writers felt called to follow up | _ 


their themes until in the final verse they could con- 
sign them to the grave. There grew up a habit and 
then a tradition of thus shadowing the themes of life 
with life’s inevitable goal. It is a tradition the 
Church has grown out of, and much of this depress- 
ing hymnody has disappeared in successive winnow- 
ings. But one is surprised, in examining our current 
hymn books, with the extent of the traces that re- 
main; mostly, I suppose, because woven in with ma- 
terials really edifying. 

But the habit of living in the presence of impend- 
ing death, so detrimental to bodily health, cannot 
be edifying to the spirit. As one matures in ex- 
perience he realizes that the cheerfulness he always 
recognized as winsome is one of God’s greatest spir- 
itual gifts. Blest is any ministry which, to use Lord 
Balfour’s words, “‘serves the great cause of cheering 


. 
| 
| 
f 








The Contents of the Hymn 159 


up.” What ministry better adapted to that end 
than a cheerful Christian song?‘ 

“Ts any merry? let him sing Psalms” is St. James’ 
little contribution to the apostolical ideal of Chris- 
tian song; the wholesome Luther transposed, bid- 
ding us cultivate a merry mood while we are sing- 
ing. Even yet the modern Church carries on the 
good tradition, as she recovers her spirits at Christ- 
mas time, and sings: 


“God rest you merry, gentlemen, 
Let nothing you dismay.” 


(iii) Of course the supreme test of the fitness of a 
lyric of personal experience for congregational use 
és that of spiritual reality. Eccentric experiences 
are entertaining but not edifying. Super-mystical 
flights perplex God’s little ones. Temperamental 
attitudes are not imitable. Even the spiritual as- 
pirations of a hymn must be kept at least within 
telescopic sight of the congregation. 

We are not called upon to sympathize with a 
scrupulosity that demands from every one who joins 
in a common song the literal appropriation of its 
every phrase. That would make the singing of a 
hymn equivalent to signing an affidavit that all the 
facts and aspirations therein set forth have been 
verified in the singer’s experience. But poetry does 
not come home to us in just that way. It helps us 
to reproduce the poet’s experience by heightening our 
own. A lyrical hymn expresses a poet’s experience 


160 Christian Hymnody 


higher than our own, let us say. He clothes it in 
words of beauty so that we may like it, and through 
liking may gain a longing for the heights. We may 
sing the hymn often before we learn to like it, and 
may like it long before we win the heights. But if 
it encourages a step upward it is a hymn of edi- 
fication. 

There are no doubt hymns which do formulate 
that affidavit for our use. Notably Dr. Watts’ 
“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,” with its climax: 


“Here, Lord, I give myself away, 
*Tis all that I can do.” 


But surely no prudent pastor would invite a pro- 
miscuous congregation thus to play the part of 
Ananias. 

A congregation should be protected also, in the 
interests of spiritual reality, from an over-senti- 
mentality in lyrics of personal feeling. Difficult as 
it may prove to draw the line, there 1s a real distinc- 
tion between hymns that heighten religious emotion 
to good purpose and those that merely play up- 
on undisciplined susceptibilities to the weakening 
rather than the strengthening of the will. For rea- 
sons that are well understood a too emotional de- 
votion is apt to tend to an undue familiarity with 
the person of our Lord. A hymn whose words aim to 
transmute His spiritual presence into flesh and blood 
is certainly no nearer reality than the words of the 
priest performing the same function in the sacrifice 





The Contents of the Hymn 161 


of the Mass. The peculiarly feminine emotions of 
some of our hymns must seem very unreal to valiant 
souls. 


There is even greater difficulty in applying the 
test of reality to the congregational use of the hymn 
of penitence. The outgoing Moderator of a recent 
General Assembly remarked in his sermon that “we 
have deleted sin from our hymn books.” * Certainly 
any books to which the remark may apply have 
passed out of spiritual realities. The fact of sin is 
fundamental and is bound to color the songs of the 
Church till time ends. The question remains, how 
is our sense of individual sin best related to our hym- 
nody? 

In early New England it was regarded as suffi- 
cient punishment for the worst offense that it be con- 
fessed publicly before the Church. We will all 
agree, that if expediency demands that a great sinner 
“tell it to the Church,” such public confession must 
be made in very plain prose. If no such expediency 
exists, I am disposed to feel that the cry of the soul 
from sin’s depths may best be kept where none but 
God can hear. Or, if the need of confession be 
urgent, that it be made in confidence to one of God’s 
ministers. 

Reality demands of each one of us that we bring 
to God’s house the burden of sinfulness. But that 
sense of sin creates no impulse whatever to sing. 
It is only the sense of sin forgiven that wakens the 


162 Christian Hymnody 


spirit of song. And I should say that our hymns 
should be confined to that phase of repentance which 
turns away from sin to behold the Lamb of God 
which taketh away the sins of the world. Is not that 
indicated by the fact that Monsell’s “My sins, my 
sins, my Saviour” is so ineffectual in congregational 
use, while Miss Elliott’s ‘Just as I am, without one 
plea” touches the common heart? 

The menace of a public hymn of confession is the 
practical certainty that it will be taken upon many 
lips lightly. I have noticed that some who most 
favor their congregational employ are equally crit- 
ical of “The General Confession” in the Prayer 
Book, on the ground that used promiscuously it is 
used with a thoughtlessness that breeds insincerity. 
But nothing applies to a formula of confession in 
very rhythmical prose that does not apply to a hymn 
of like content. 


(c) THe Hymn or Prayer. In this third group 
of Hymns of Life, possibly only four familiar ones 
take prayer as a theme to be developed: 


“My God, is any hour so sweet:” 
“From every stormy wind that blows:” 
“There is an eye that never sleeps:” 
“Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire.” 


The Hymn of Prayer is rather one in the form of 
prayer, with its petitions versified. Its contents 
cover life. No one can limit them except by abridg- 











The Contents of the Hymn _ 1163 


ing our desires. All we can demand is that the 
subject-matter be submitted to the same tests that 
determine edification in the hymns of experience. 

The reason prayer occupies so small a place in 
a classified hymnal is because the whole book is so 
permeated by its spirit that segregation is impracti- 
cable. The doctrinal lyric, “Rock of Ages” is a 
prayer; so is the lyric of experience, “Jesu, Lover of 
my soul.” 

This preponderance of prayers is surprising only 
from the point of view claiming praise as the hymn’s 
special function. For the “psalms” of the early 
Church were largely prayers, and in non-liturgical 
churches the hymn book has always been the people’s 
prayer book. Its importance as such is greatly en- 
hanced by the failure of our pulpit prayers to func- 
tion as they once did. The ominous rubric, now so 
familiar in our orders of service, “The congregation 
will remain seated during the prayers,” violates the 
law of probability. The probability being that a 
seated congregation is not praying, though possibly 
listening to the minister. As the 1787 draft of the 
Presbyterian Directory for Worship put it, “There 
cannot be devotion without the appearance of de- 
votion.” (This is not one of Chesterton’s para- 
doxes, but a bit of sound psychology.) 

Our hymns of prayer at all events are sung in an 
attitude of devotion and have the felicity of direct 
address to God. The rhythm of the verse that 


164 Christian Hymnody 


makes common utterance practicable, the glow of 
poetic feeling that reaches the heart, the medium of 
the music that helps to express the inexpressible,— 
all these features of the hymn of prayer enhance the 
opportunity it offers of real communion with God. 
And if it does no more than diffuse an atmosphere 
of reverence it has already brought an answer to its 
petitions. 

The Metrical Litany is a special type of the 
Hymn of Prayer now familiar. Sometimes too 
much in the inventory manner, it is everywhere 
effective in “Father, hear Thy children’s call,” sung 
to Dr. Gower’s music. By intention, no doubt, the 
metrical litany is a liturgical hymn, as in Pollock’s 
sevenfold “Jesus, in Thy dying woes,” designed to 
punctuate the seven-hour devotions of Good Friday. 
But “Just as I am” is also a litany, composed by a 
lady whose detestation of high church lacked noth- 
ing in emphasis. 

Miss Elliott’s hymn is in itself an ample vindica- 
tion of the metrical litany. I have sometimes felt, 
as the address before the Communion closed with the 
words, “Let us therefore so come that we may find 
refreshing and rest unto our souls,”’ and the congre- 
gation rises together to sing as an introit set to 
Barnby’s music, that litany with its recurring re- 
frain, “O Lamb of God, I come,”—I have some- 
times felt that it was as perfect an expression of de- 
votion as one is likely to come upon in this world. 





eat ann ee 


i il ee Pa ipa 2a 


The Contents of the Hymn 165 


Ill. A Cyurcuity Hymwnopy 


The third theory is that the special function of 
the hymn is churchly. It is distinctively church 
song, as being the authorized medium through which 
the congregation, as representing the corporate 
Church, can offer its praise in a way consistent with 
its unity and the appointed ordering of its worship. 

That hymnody exists to supply the Church with 
hymns was obvious even to old-fashioned Presby- 
terians, as appears from the title of Dr. Charles S. 
Robinson’s first book, Songs of the Church. And 
that the hymn fulfilled its function by contributing 
to public worship is implied in the title of his sec- 
ond, Songs of the Sanctuary. The theory that the 
hymn is church song in the sense of uttering the 
Church’s voice is something quite different, and if 
applied to the contents of Dr. Robinson’s books 
would much reduce their bulk. 

The theory, as it affects Engiish hymnody, is a 
product of the Oxford Revival of the eighteen thir- 
ties. It rests upon three foundations: a heightened 
conception of the Church, an ideal of worship as its 
corporate offering to God, and a new emphasis on the 
Church Year as the framework and calendar of that 
worship. 

On these foundations the Oxford reformers pro- 
ceeded to reconstruct English hymnody, partly by 
writing it anew, partly by shifting to the new basis 
so much of the old as it retained. 


166 Christian Hymnody 


1. The Hymn of the Church Militant 


The ideal of a corporate worship gives us first 
the Hymn of the Church, with its new note of self- 
consciousness, possibly of spiritual pride. The 
Church, as seen from Oxford, is portrayed, as we 
have discovered already, in a doctrinal hymn, “The 
Church’s one Foundation.” Quaintly enough the 
one that seems nearest to being its precursor did not 
come out of the Wesleys’ high church period, but out 
of the heart of Connecticut Congregationalism,— 
President Dwight’s “I love Thy kingdom, Lord.” 
The only hymn on the Church that came out of the 
Evangelical Revival was Newton’s “Glorious things 
of thee are spoken,” with its Old Testament flavor 
and culmination of pure edification. Stone’s typ- 
ically Oxford hymn, “Round the sacred city 
gather,” is also for edification, but how different the 
criteria of the Church: 


“God the Spirit dwells within thee, 
His Society divine, 

His the living word thou keepest, 
His thy Apostolic line. 


“Ancient prayer and song liturgic, 
Creeds that change not to the end, 
As His gifts we have received them, 
As His charge we will defend.” 


Such is the Church within the ramparts, and 
such when marching forth in Baring-Gould’s “On- 
ward, Christian soldiers” in martial parade, with the 


The Contents of the Hymn 167 


processional cross “going on before”: like an army 
because corporate,—‘‘All one body we.” 


The Oxford conception of churchliness, covering 
all life and endeavor, gives a new basis for the 
Hymn of Service also; making it distinctively a 
hymn of the Church militant; singing, while work- 
ing the parish, of the Church’s functions; singing, 
while working abroad, of the Church’s commission. 

And here, it seems to me, the sense of the Church’s 
solidarity, the conviction that the call to personal 
service is within the one commission, the assurance 
that our work is included in the anticipation of the 
Church’s victory,—these things make the hymn of 
service a new song by making it church song. The 
Christian who goes forth alone to solve the gigantic 
problems that face us, the evangelization of a re- 
luctant world, the infusion of a spiritual conception 
of life into the social order, may steel his heart with 
the song of duty as he dips up the seas of human 
trouble with his little bucket, but I do not see how 
he can encourage his heart with the song of hope. 
It is the multitude of laborers that brings promise, 
the organization of labor that brings effectiveness. 
And if that be so the church song is the most inspir- 
ing hymn of service. 

I am not sure that Oxford ideals have produced 
any very notable work-song, unless it be Bishop 
Coxe’s “Lord, her watch Thy Church is keeping.” 
What it has really done is expressed symbolically 


168 Christian Hymnody 


by the very simple act of gathering up all these 
hymns of varied service under the common heading 
of “Church Work.” 


At this point the Oxford Movement, which was 
ecclesiastical, is confronted by the recent Social 
Movement, which is secular. This makes a practical 
appeal to many of the least ecclesiastically-minded 
within the churches, who prefer to replace “the 
Songs of the Church” by “Hymns of the Kingdom,” 
and who are no doubt one with us in heart and hope 
while they remind us that churchianity is hardly 
Christianity. They would generously codperate 
with the great company of outside workers who turn 
their backs to the Church and sing ethical songs to 
church tunes. But it is a question how far there can 
be common song between church workers and those 
outside so long as the kingdom remains a spiritual 
kingdom, and its King is proclaimed Head of the 
Church. For how can two sing together unless they 
are agreed upon the key? 


2. The Hymn of the Church Triumphant 


The Oxford conception of the Church’s continuity 
and solidarity did not fall short of heaven. It 
culminated there, and effected marked change in 
the contents of the songs of the heavenly home. 

John Mason Neale’s researches in medieval poetry 
and his brilliant renderings of some passages into 
English hymns grew out of a consuming desire to 





The Contents of the Hymn 169 


emphasize the historic continuity between the Latin 
and English churches. At the time the other- 
worldly type of religion inherited from the Evan- 
gelical Revival still obtained, and no part of his 
work appealed more than his group of New Jeru- 
salem hymns: 


“Oh, what their joy and their glory must be:” 
Light’s abode, celestial Salem:” 


But more especially the three caught up so quickly 
from his version of the Rhythm of Bernard of 
Morlaix: 


“The world is very evil:” 
“Jerusalem the golden:” 
“For thee, O dear, dear country.” 


The “Jerusalem” motive was of course taken 
from Scriptures; but it was Scripture mediated 
through the Medieval Church. There was the same 
disillusionment in the then recent “I’m but a stran- 
ger here,” as in “For thee, O dear, dear country.” 
But the one was just a human sob: the other a voice 
from the cloister, shrining the monastic conception 
of life, the monk’s rapt vision, his longing for re- 
lease from this vile flesh; and so a part of the 
Church’s unending song. 

Even more expressive of Oxford ideals are the 
hymns that clothe heaven itself with a churchly ful- 
fillment. They make us feel that the whole com- 
pany of the faithful who have entered in are church- 
men still: 


170 Christian Hymnody 


“For all the saints who from their labors rest :” 
“Hark! the sound of holy voices: 

“Sing Alleluia forth in duteous praise :” 

“Let our choir new anthems raise.” 


In these hymns “our departed friends’ have 
merged into the “All-saints” of the liturgy. It is 
more than a change of manner, it is a sea-change, 
from Dr. Watts’ vision of the individuality of “the 
saints above” in “‘Give me the wings of faith to rise” 
to these songs of the continuity and solidarity of a 
corporate Church whose unity is being fulfilled in 
heaven. 

None the less not even the urge of an Oxford 
Movement can eliminate the personal equation. 
The stiffest churchman is only a vested man. And 
the editor of Hymns ancient and modern included 
his own “There is a blessed home.”” The contents of 
these personal hymns of heaven need as careful 
scrutiny as the more churchly. The complacent 
selfishness of Watts’ ‘When I can read my title 
clear’ has driven it from the hymnals. The un- 
reality of the popular ‘“‘Glory Song” ought to keep it 
from entering in. It blushes when it encounters 
Miss Rossetti’s “Give me the lowest place.” 


3. The Liturgical Hymn 


(a) Tue HymMnopy or THE CHURCH YEAR 
(Hymni per tottus anni). Alongside of the Church 
Hymn the Oxford men established the Liturgical 





The Contents of the Hymn 171 


Hymn: one whose contents are determined by the 
particular occasion of worship for which it is pro- 
vided, and which occupies a definite place in the 
order of worship prescribed for that occasion. 

It finds no special support, apart from his in- 
sistence upon eucharistic song, in St. Paul’s injunc- 
tions, and does not need to. The Hallel of the Last 
Supper was a liturgical hymn in every sense and is 
a sufficient precedent. St. Paul was dealing with 
simple people gathered most unconventionally. 
Apart from some order for the Communion, a fixed 
ritual would have been as uncomfortable as we 
should find it at a cottage prayer meeting. Liturgies 
' wait on architecture. In the course of time the 
stately basilica would no doubt suggest some rever- 
sion to old Temple ideals of worship. And so a 
liturgical hymnody is a development and not an 
inheritance from apostolic tradition or practice. 

To our liturgiologists the pattern shown on the 
mount is not the worship of the Temple but that of 
the Latin Church as embodied mainly in the Missal 
or Mass-book and the Breviary or Daily Office book. 
Now in that model, the function of the hymn is 
purely liturgical ; which is to say that each prescribed 
hymn is irremovably imbedded in some special 
Office appointed for some “Hour” of the day, some 
day of the week, or some season of the Church Year. 
Neo hymn but the one appointed can be sung at 
Prime and the one appointed for Prime cannot be 
sung at Matins, nor Tuesday’s hymn on Sunday; 


172 Christian Hymnody 


and so on through the year. And of course the con- 
tent of the hymn is determined by the nature of the 
Office enclosing it. 

In the English Reformation the Breviary was 
allowed to influence Morning and Evening Prayer, 
and the Missal to influence the Communion Office; 
but the Breviary hymns and the Sequences of the 
Mass dropped out altogether. When hymn singing 
was resumed in the Church of England it entered 
under the impulsion of the Evangelical Revival: it 
was distinctively an evangelical rather than a lit- 
urgical hymnody. The early Anglican hymn books 
made very little more recognition of the Church 
Year than did our Presbyterian Psalms and Hymns 
of the eighteen thirties and forties. 

Gradually the feeling grew that the hymn book 
ought to be a companion to the Prayer Book, match- 
ing every date and occasion of the church offices 
with the “proper hymn.” To accomplish this re- 
quired a rearrangement of the church hymnal in 
which the main body of its contents would group 
themselves around the framework of the Church 
Year and offices of the Church. And this led natu- 
rally to the subordination or suppression of much 
familiar material not germane to the purpose, espe- 
cially the evangelical hymn and the hymn of indi- 
vidual experience. In a spirit of conciliation rather 
than logically room was made in a sort of supple- 
ment for more or fewer favorite or desirable pieces 
under the heading of ““General.” 











The Contents of the Hymn 173 


The filling out of this scheme called for much 
fresh material. There were no sacramental hymns 
in English charged with the high doctrine of the 
Oxford Revival; there was an insufficiency of ma- 
terials for the greater festivals having just the right 
tone, and for many of the lesser occasions of the 
Prayer Book there were no hymns at all. The Latin 
hymns of the old Church, overlooked at the English 
Reformation and neglected since, now for the first 
time shone forth in their liturgical fitness and were 
translated by many hands. John Mason Neale even 
adapted some of the Greek Church hymns, and a 
growing company of writers produced fresh contri- 
butions to fill out the tale of a liturgical hymnody. 

The new interest in Latin hymns, after encounter- 
ing reproach, was to spread through Protestantism, 
and many of Neale’s versions proved a permanent 
enrichment. As for more original contributions we 
must not forget that “Sun of my soul,” ‘““There is a 
green hill far away,” “Art thou weary, art thou 
languid,” “Lead, Kindly Light” (to name only a 
few), are as much a product of the Oxford Move- 
ment as are Tracts for the Times themselves. 

And yet, what seems to an outsider an excessive 
devotion to liturgical ideals has diluted English hym- 
nody, has weakened its hold on men, by introducing 
much material that illustrates the theory at the ex- 
- pense of the singers. Hymns ancient and modern 
was and is the prominent exemplar of high Anglican 
ideals. But what a superfluity of Latin hymns ren- 


174 Christian Hymnody 


dered in pedestrian verse! What forced tributes to 
an occasion or a saint! How can a sympathetic pas- 
tor give out such first lines as: 


“Sweet flow’rets of the martyr band:” 
“Why doth that impious Herod fear:” 
“O sinner, for a little space :” 

“Blesséd feasts of blessed martyrs :” 
“O Jesu, Thou the Virgin’s crown:” 
*‘Shall we not love Thee, Mother dear :” 
“He sat to watch o’er customs paid.” 


One wonders how many of the incredible number 
of millions into whose hands Hymns ancient and 
modern has been put by their clergy join in render- 
ing such strains, or whether a silent majority has 
not learned to take refuge behind the corporate 
theory of church song. And in gauging the contents 
of these new contributions we must think not only of 
what they offer but what they replace. For church 
hymnals have gained such proportions that room 
can be found for the new only by discarding so much 
of the old. 

(b) THe Hymnopy or THE CHuRcH YEAR IN 
Non-LirureicaL Cuurcues. They have been 
very slow to recognize even its greater days. The 
generation before mine could remember when New 
England Congregationalism frowned on any celebra- 
tion of Christmas; when kindly parents wrestled 
with the spreading Santa Claus superstition by leav- 
ing quite empty the little stockings trustingly hung 
before the hearth. My own generation can recall 





The Contents of the Hymn 175 


when in Presbyterian churches Easter was recog- 
nized only by the absence on that day of many of the 
young people, seeking good cheer elsewhere. 

The Westminster Directory for the Publique 
Worship of God had provided that “Festivall daies, 
vulgarly called Holy daies, having no warrant in 
the word of God, are not to be continued.” The 
puritan tradition is what was to be continued. The 
fathers of American Presbyterianism struck out this 
taboo from their new Directory for Worship, leaving 
its pastors and parishes quite free in this matter, as 
they still are. The clergy were to prove much 
slower than the laity in exercising this freedom. 

In the absence of leadership by the clergy, it has 
really been the laity, acting on sentiment, who have 
dealt with the Church Year in non-liturgical com- 
munions. ‘The rigidity of the liturgical system and 
the filling up of the calendar with numerous occa- 
sions has not appealed to them. The saints’ days, 
unless it be the touching All-Saints’ Day, are likely 
to remain in sole possession of those with Roman 
or Anglican traditions. The typical American will 
leave his business to celebrate Washington’s Birth- 
day (regretting it does not fall within the football 
season), but he will not leave it for a service com- 
memorating any of the saints. 

The only parts of the Church Year that touch 
the common heart are its recognition of Sunday as 
the day of Christian worship and the days or seasons 
that commemorate the outstanding events of our 


176 Christian Hymnody 


Lord’s life. To that extent the Oxford influence | 
has affected the church worship. And most of the 
hymnals of non-liturgical churches open with an 
adequate provision conveniently arranged, whether 
its sections bear such labels as “Nativity” and 
“Resurrection” or as “Christmas” and “Easter”; 
their intent being so obviously liturgical. 


Of such a service-book the Hymns for the Day 
are the natural opening. 

The Morning Hymn, to be effectual, should catch 
the sunlight on the world, and waken our better 
part to dedicate a new day: 


“Awake, my soul, and with the sun:” 
“As the sun doth daily rise:” 

“New every morning is the love:” 

“O Father, hear my morning prayer.” 


Just as the morning hymn should have something 
of the thrill of spiritual adventure, so The Evening 
Hyman should have something of spiritual peace: the 
restfulness of the dark, but certainly not its sugges- 
tion of the shadow of death. “Now the day is over” 
and “Sun of my soul” bring comfort. Bishop 
Wordsworth’s ‘“The day is gently sinking to a close” 
brings distress with its “The weary world is moulder- 
ing to decay” and “Onward to darkness and to death 
we tend”: partial truths sentimentally draped, 
whose reiteration can bring help or health to no 
human soul. Our evening hymns need a drastic re- 
vision. 


The Contents of the Hymn 177 


The Sunday Hymn used to vibrate between a 
seventh day of rest and a first day of resurrection. 
That is why, I suppose, Bishop Wordsworth’s didac- 
tic ““O day of rest and gladness” strives to explain 
the chronology. In a not especially rich department 
it is still perhaps, barring a depressing line or two, 
our best hymn. 

The Hymn at the Opening of Service deserves 
more attention than it gets from pastors. It is psy- 
chologically important. The custom of opening 
with the L. M. doxology came down from New 
England, whence I fear the custom of sitting at 
prayer also came. In its own way it is equally 
inept. The doxology used to be the Te Deum of 
the unliturgical; reserved for occasion, sung with 
feeling. What has cheapened it and taken the heart 
out of it is the simple psychological truth that the 
late breakfast and scanning of the Sunday newspaper 
and the rush to be in time for church do not lay 
an adequate foundation for so lofty a burst of praise. 
When the doxology is so used I feel that the service 
never quite recovers from the fawx pas. An opening 
hymn should take a lower level, that the service may 
ascend and not descend: 


“The earth is hushed in silence :” 
“This is the day of light :” 
“Lord, when we bend before Thy throne.” 


“Spirit Divine, attend our prayer.” 


The Hymn at the Close of Service may be re- 
garded liturgically as dismission or homiletically 


178 Christian Hymnody 


as the hymn after sermon. From the first point of 
view Ellerton’s “Saviour, again to Thy dear Name 
we raise” is a most interesting blend of the cor- 
porate conception of worship with our human indi- 
viduality. The congregation first sounds its cor- 
porate note of praise, and then on their “homeward 
way” severally ask God’s blessing on their lives. 
It has been spoiled in the new Episcopal hymnal, but 
as given in the Presbyterian seems perfection. 

Only a severe liturgiologist would refuse to yield 
the closing hymn to the preacher of the day who 
understands how to make use of it. It is an oppor- 
tunity but a delicate task. He does not need a hymn 
on the same theme as his sermon, but kindred in tone 
and atmosphere, that shall seem like a melody the 
sermon evoked. As if, for instance, the sermon 
should argue for survival after death, and the con- 
gregation should respond not with a song of immor- 
tality but with a prayer that the Kindly Light may 
lead us in the dark: 


Till ‘‘with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.” 


Advent, which begins the Church Year, finds little 
_ Tecognition in non-liturgical communions, as a prep- 
aration for Christmas. The Second Advent Hymn 
seems likely to become the peculiar property of 
Premillenarians. No one can foretell whether they 
will go forward to establish the Advent season, or, 
like Horatius Bonar, aim to bathe the whole year 


The Contents of the Hymn 179 


in the light of expectation. Bonar’s hymns alone 
furnish an ample Advent hymnody: 


“Come, Lord, and tarry not:” 
“Is the Bridegroom absent still :” 
“Hark! ’tis the watchman’s cry.” 


The Christmas Hymn came first into the home, 
then into the Sunday school, later into the church. 
In the index of subjects in the Presbyterian Psalms 
and Hymns of 1831 three Psalms are mentioned 
under “Incarnation,” three hymns under “Nativity.” 
In the 1843 book “Incarnation” heads a section of 
eleven more attractive hymns. Christmas hymnody 
has gradually assumed very full proportions. Influ- 
enced by a growing love of old carols it tends to 
reproduce the simplicities of their handling of the 
gospel of the Infancy rather than the splendor of 
the angels’ song. It is represented by Phillips 
Brooks’ “O little town of Bethlehem” rather than 
by Wesley’s “Hark! the herald angels sing.” 

The Epiphany Hymn finds a use by merging it 
with Christmas carols; sometimes, I am afraid, from 
an unawareness of the difference in date and sig- 
nificance of the two occasions. Better so perhaps than 
that the coming of the Gentiles and all that it means 
should be overlooked. But the Epiphany surely is 
the great missionary occasion of the year. 

The Palm Sunday Hymn is finding increasing use, 
and Holy week is gradually usurping the place of 
the old time Week of Prayer, set for the most in- 


180 Christian Hymnody 


convenient week of the year; very probably to avoid 
a seeming participation in Advent or Lent. 

The Passion Hymn has fallen into considerable 
neglect,—an anomaly in communions that make 
much of the Atonement. It is regrettable that they 
have adopted Easter so much more enthusiastically 
and generally than Good Friday. Is a parish con- 
gregation that passes by the green hill without the 
city wall spiritually fitted to find the empty tomb? 
At a time when so many parishes made each Com- 
munion season something of a Good Friday cele- 
bration, the question was less pertinent than now. 
It has become rather critical in States that have, 
imprudently I think, made the day a legal holiday. 
In such case the Church’s option is to encourage the 
people in the public sports that now mark an 
American holiday, or to call them to remember the 
passion of our Lord. 

It may of course be argued that hymns that viv- 
idly renew the humiliations and sufferings of the 
Passion are more likely to call forth “tears, idle 
tears” from the sentimental than to stimulate the 
resolves that lie too deep for tears. Certainly they 
are not wholesome “‘for human nature’s daily food.” 
Perhaps such as merely harrow the feelings should 
not be used at all, and such as are helpful be reserved 
for a fit occasion when they express rather than de- 
press the feelings. Presbyterian congregations at 
least should be given opportunity to sing Dr. Alex- 
ander’s version of the great Good Friday hymn, “O 





The Contents of the Hymn 1181 


sacred Head, now wounded” to the even greater 
“‘Passion Chorale,” for there is none other that so 
reveals the sanctity of life. 

The Easter Hymn came into our churches by 
way of the Sunday school. There are no liturgical 
Churches that make more of the Easter festival than 
do many of the congregations once trained to regard 
all Sundays as equally the day of our Lord’s rising. 
The test of an Easter song is its ability to reproduce 
something of the wonder, first of all, and then the 
assurance that filled the disciples’ hearts. Its appeal 
is to the feelings. And our one peerless Easter song 
is still the one whose literary claims are humble and 
whose music transcends the rules of ritual song: 


“Jesus Christ is risen to-day, 
Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!” 


Our Easter hymns demand a careful scrutiny lest 
they degenerate into noise and an effort to work up 
an artificial hysteria. For they have put into the 
hands of a witnessing Church a means of bearing 
that witness which for some reason is singularly 
effective. People from the Church’s borders and 
beyond heed the call to her Easter services as to none 
other, and join heartily in the Easter hymns. I am 
disposed to think they have done more to keep the 
reality of Christ’s resurrection alive to the class we 
designate as “the man in the street” than any other 
agency. Our apologetic discourses are not convinc- 
ing; our “Christian Evidences” get no closer to 


182 Christian Hymnody 


everyday people than a treatise on trigonometry. 
But our Easter visitors are very susceptible to the 
heightened feeling of the congregation, the sugges- 
tion of confidence that rings in the poetry and music. 

The Ascension Day Hymn suffers from the feel- 
ing that favors the use of such as are appropriate to 
the season, since Ascension Day, coming during the 
week, has found no place in the Church Year of non- 
liturgical communions. But it is quite available for 
the “Sunday after Ascension Day,” and should be 
revived, ‘‘lest we forget.” 

The Whitsunday Hymn and The Trinity Hymn, 
on the other hand, have not suffered at all from the 
failure to observe Whitsunday and Trinity Sunday. 
Even the liturgical mind and temper would prob- 
ably feel that Heber’s “Holy! Holy! Holy! 
Lord God Almighty” and Miss Auber’s ‘Our blest 
Redeemer, ere He breathed” may be encouraged to 
girdle the whole of the revolving church year. 


In any communion or parish in which you or I 
are likely to serve we must accept the observance of 
church days as a fact accomplished. The observance 
has not come by inheritance or authority; and cer- 
tainly not as a result of fruitful studies on the part 
of the clergy in liturgics, the most neglected amongst 
us of all theological disciplines. Nor is it a natural 
evolution or even a logical development. It is a 
partial reversion to the ideals and practices of other 
communions that have adhered to the liturgical con- 


The Contents of the Hymn 183 


ception of worship, and has been brought about by 
sentiment ; responding in feeling to those influences, 
partly spiritual, partly esthetic, that started from 
the Oxford Revival. 

Whether these influences will carry the liturgical 
movement to a complete adoption of the Church 
Year as the most seemly and convenient framework 
of worship and edification, or whether they will be 
counteracted by the informal spirit of evangelism or 
the free ways of modern life, who can predict of a 
movement so unguided and so immune from official 
interference ? 

For my own part I have been led to believe that 
the liturgical conception of hymnody is useful 
within its limits, and that the personal adoption by 
a pastor of a part of the Church Year, say from Ad- 
vent to Whitsunday, is the most helpful guide in the 
important matter of his choice of hymns for his 
people. It centers church song around the various 
aspects of the person of Christ instead of the person- 
ality of the pastor, his whims and limitations or his 
indifference. It tends to widen the congregational 
repertoire, and to furnish an occasion and a setting, 
week by week, for the great hymns of the Church. 
But this end, and not the particular method of 
securing it, is the main thing. 

For thirty years I have occupied a quasi-official re- 
lation to the hymnody of one communion, and am 
in a position to know how widespread the complaint, 
how deep the indignation at the manner in which so 


184 Christian Hymnody 


many of our pastors are using the hymnal. I may 
quote a communication (from an esteemed elder) 
that comes to me in the very act of this writing. “It 
is shocking,”’ he says, “how our best ministers simply 
go around in a circle, picking out a few of the more 
familiar hymns that will fit the sermon they have 
just prepared.” The administering of such a shock 
once or twice a week does seem an odd method of 
teaching and admonishing one another with Psalms 
and hymns and spiritual songs in such a way as will 
make melody in their hearts. 


But the liturgical hymn exemplifies only one side 
of the churchly theory of hymnody we have been 
considering. The other and, I think, more helpful 
side, is in infusing our hymnody with a new sense 
of the solidarity of the Church: in setting beside the 
hymn of individual experience and duty the Church 
Hymn, which finds its inspiration in common mem- 
bership of the Body of Christ, and answers His com- 
mon call with common song. 

This churchly conception has not made and can- 
not make the hymn to be simply the voice of the 
corporate Church, nor made it other than St. Paul 
made it, the spiritual song of a Christian heart. But 
it has made the common road of life and service re- 
sound with millions of voices joined in the marching 
song of a Catholic Church: 


“We are not divided, 
All one body we.” 


The Contents of the Hymn 185 


It has left a sectarian hymnody far behind. Top- 
lady’s polemic verses on Election would be no more 
welcome to a Presbyterian congregation than Wes- 
ley’s on ““The horrible decree” would be to a Meth- 
odist congregation. ‘The modern hymnal is the 
nearest approach yet made to the unity of Christ’s 
Church. 





LECTURE FIVE 
THE TEXT OF THE HYMNS 











LECTURE FIVE 


THE TEXT OF THE HYMNS 
I. Tue Puritan ZEAL For “Purity” or TEext 


The first book printed in this country was a psalm 
book. 

The English Puritans who came to Massachu- 
setts Bay in the seventeenth century brought with 
them the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter they had 
used in their parish churches at home. Here, in the 
wilderness, far from the conventions of civilization, 
all alone with God, the familiar English psalm book 
raised, as most things did in that atmosphere, scru- 
ples of conscience. It dealt too loosely with the in- 
spired Hebrew text. Whether the men who had 
made it lacked a sufficient acquaintance with that 
language, or felt the strain and shackles of versifi- 
cation, it was not literal. It lacked “purity.” 

And so a little group of emigrant scholars, cut 
off from most of life’s comforts and most scholarly 
resources by the wide ocean, and threatened by 
savage neighbors, set themselves to the task of con- 
structing a purer version of the Psalms in meter,— 
if meter it is to be called. Then they sent to the 
old home for a press and some fonts of type, and in 
1640 printed their now famous Bay Psalm Book. 


Their enterprise was quixotic, and the few copies 
189 


190 Christian Hymnody 


of their Psalm Book that survive are the most ap- 
pealing memorial of what we now call the New 
England conscience. And it was all, we are tempted 
to say, by way of a pedantic concern for the text of 
their songs, a matter of the right word and the turn 
of a phrase. 

That would be to overlook the fact that to the 
seventeenth century Puritan the text of their church- 
songs had come to mean everything. The metrical 
Psalm was to them not a hymn based on Scripture: 
it was a revised version of Scripture. Granting that 
principle of an inspired song discussed in a former 
lecture, were not the Church authorities bound first 
to provide and then safeguard a literal version of 
the Psalms that could be sung? The remote and 
romantic surroundings of the Bay Psalm Book make 
it an isolated cairn showing the extreme lengths to 
which a Puritan Church would go in this pursuit. 
But so far as the actual proceedings of the Bay di- 
vines are concerned, they were doing just what the 
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland did a 
very few years later in their protracted revision of 
“Rous’ Version” of the Psalms before allowing the 
Scottish kirks to introduce it into public worship. 


When the eighteenth century revival awakened 
New England, both the Psalms and hymns of Watts 
were in many hands and hearts already. The evan- 
gelical enthusiasm aroused by Whitefield’s preaching 
cleared the hearers’ minds of the earlier scruples 








The Text of the Hymns 1QI 


and agitations concerning psalmody. The whole 
structure of Puritan psalmody gave way under 
evangelical pressure, and the singing of hymns 
started almost spontaneously. 

It was now the Presbyterian churches that held on 
to Puritan traditions of psalmody, and even those 
who yielded to revival influences asked no more than 
permission to introduce Watts’ version of the 
Psalms. The desolating Psalmody Controversy that 
ensued was, on the face of it, nothing more than a 
controversy concerning the text of Psalms. The 
practical issue was whether the parishes be restricted 
to the “Rous” version of the Scottish Assembly, just 
referred to, or might substitute Watts’ free render- 
ings of the substance of the Psalms, with their 
evangelical implications clearly expressed, and their 
text otherwise adapted to English feeling. ‘The 
whole controversy relates itself to the original situa- 
tion at Massachusetts Bay. The question raised was 
simply a new turn given to the Puritan scruple as 
to purity of the text. 

In the Presbyterian Synod, as we all know, the 
accommodated Psalm as against the literal Psalm 
won through. The free hymn soon followed (as no 
doubt both parties had expected that it would) and 
was given full recognition in the Directory for Wor- 
ship of 1788. 

The new hymns quite naturally were an object of 
suspicion to those in any communion who questioned 
their use. Laying no claim to “purity” of text, they 


192 Christian Hymnody 


had all the more on that account to submit them- 
selves to rigid scrutiny by responsible representatives 
of the Churches, and by amateur theologians, very 
numerous in those more thoughtful days. Even 
more they had to be watched and guarded against 
error by those who had made themselves responsible 
for their admission, and were hoping so much from 
their use. 

The text of hymns was thus much more of a con- 
cern, when the time came to prepare new hymn books 
of their own make for the various communions in 
this country. And to the average Christian, who 
cherished the hymn book in his private devotions and 
learned many of the hymns by heart, their text 
meant a great deal more than that of such poetry as 
he read, and which he could take or leave. It meant 
more than the text of Shakespeare means to a 
scholar, just because it came closer to his life. 


If. Tur Textuat Criticism or Our Hymns 


In 1860, when hymn books were aplenty, Dr. 
Park and Dr. Phelps of Andover Seminary pub- 
lished their Hymns and Chotrs,* a book still instruc- 
tive, and retaining the distinction of being the first 
American attempt at a systematic hymnology. In 
view of what has just been said it is not surprising 
that a good deal more than a third of the book 
deals with “The Text of Hymns.” The treatise 
is really an apologia for The Sabbath Hymn Book 





The Text of the Hymns 193 


its authors had published two years earlier after 
more years of careful preparation, and with a knowl- 
edge of the subject that in its time and place was 
probably unique. They had sought out many new 
hymns and had subjected the familiar ones to close 
criticism, constructing in many cases a text of their 
own, involving omissions, amendments and even 
additions. 

Their hymn book encountered a storm of criti- 
cism, in which the publishers of Elias Nason’s Con- 
gregational Hymn Book,” recently put on the mar- 
ket, took the part of AZolus. And of course the 
changes of familiar texts afforded the most vulner- 
able point of attack: and it became incumbent upon 
the authors of Hymns and Choirs to justify them. 

It is possible therefore that the ample space al- 
lotted to “The Text of Hymns” in their treatise 
does not correspond precisely with their sense of pro- 
portion in constructing a hymnological system. 
Very likely it measures the extent of their chagrin 
at the reception their amended texts had met. Be 
that as it may the chapter remains the fullest pres- 
entation of the subject yet given. It is from the 
hand of Professor Park and is worked out with the 
precision and particularity to be expected from that 
hand. If one could reduce his many categories to 
more manageable bounds, the lines of his thesis 
would be something like these: 

(a) That the criticism of hymns is as necessary 
as it ts perilous. [The peril he had been forcibly 


194. Christian Hymnody 


made to realize. The necessity he would no doubt 
impress upon many whose memory enshrined this or 
that text of familiar hymns learned in childhood, 
and who resented any changes of text without re- 
gard to their meritoriousness |. 

(b) That an immense number of textual altera- 
tions are present in current hymn books: [in all 
practically, though Dr. Park kept the “Old School 
Presbyterian Collection” well to the fore by way of 
illustration ]. 

(c) That changes of text are really destrable for 
various reasons: [that range all the way from the 
sphere of sound doctrine to that of elementary gram- 
mar: and which he proceeds to catalogue and to 
illustrate with a wealth of detail ]. 

(d) That all the omissions and amendments of 
text in “The Sabbath Hymn Book? are justified. 
This last, the heart of the discussion to Dr. Park 
and his colleague, has ceased to beat, now that their 
book lies buried beneath the strata of time. You 
cannot expect a wide public to take an interest in 
fossil remains, and yet both fossil and book are 
links in the chain of life, and each has a story to 
tell. If discriminating sermons were still wanted, 
a preacher could find many a theme in the altera- 
tion of hymn texts which the Andover Faculty 
thought necessary or desirable in 1858. 


The Text of the Hymns 195 


Ill. Tuer Conrusine State oF THE TEXT 


The only one of Dr. Park’s propositions that was 
incontestable was that revealing the multitude of 
divergences in the text of the Psalms and hymns 
then in current use. It was not merely that so many 
differed from what their authors had written: there 
was a lack of uniformity in the text of even the cher- 
ished hymns as given in various books and sung in 
different congregations. Of most of them there was 
in fact no standard text and the clamorous or pa- 
thetic appeal against any alteration had little to 
rest upon other than prejudice or individual associa- 
tion. 

“There is,” he says, “a multitude of readers who 
rely implicitly on the text of the Presbyterian (Old 
School) Collection, and regard every instance of de- 
parture from this text as a violation of the rights of 
authorship; yet in seven hundred and forty of the 
more common lyrics in that Collection, there are 
thirteen hundred and twenty-seven variations, ex- 
clusive of the frequent omissions. In the preface or 
advertisement of that manual it is stated: “The 
psalms have been left without alteration; the Com- 
mittee believing that it would be extremely difficult 
to furnish a more acceptable version than that of 
Watts. .. .’ But in the three hundred and forty- 
five versions of psalms contained in the Collection, 
there are six hundred and ninety-seven alterations. 


196 Christian Hymnody 


Indeed there are not one hundred and ten of these 
psalms unaltered.” ® 

In the New School Presbyterian hymn book, Pro- 
fessor Park found thirteen hundred and thirty-six 
variations of the original text in seven hundred and 
seventy-four of its most noted hymns. Of books 
used in Congregationalist churches he found eleven 
hundred and twenty-six changes in eight hundred 
and ten familiar hymns of the Connecticut Associa- 
tion’s book, and nine hundred changes in five hun- 
dred and fifty hymns he examined in Henry Ward 
Beecher’s Plymouth Collection. 

These figures are hard to grasp and to retain, but 
they leave an impression of the actual state of the 
hymns then in use. That impression may perhaps 
be deepened by selecting the single case of a hymn 
whose words lie familiarly in the memory of most 
of us: Toplady’s “Rock of Ages, cleft for me.’ So 
it began in Presbyterian and Congregationalist 
churches; but many Baptist congregations, who 
used Rippon’s Selection,* were singing “Rock of 
Ages, shelter me”; and Episcopalian, Methodist and 
Lutheran congregations were using a recast of the 
four verses into three. 


Old School Presbyterians were singing “From Thy 
wounded side which flowed.” 

New School Presbyterians were singing “From Thy riven 
side which flowed.” 

Some Congregationalists were singing “From Thy side a 
healing flood.” 


The Text of the Hymns 197 


Old School—“Cleanse me from its guilt and power.” 

New School—“Save me, Lord, and make me pure.” 

Some Congregationalists—“Save from wrath, and make 
me pure.” 


Old School—“Could my zeal no respite know.” 
New School—“Should my zeal no languor know.” 


Old School—“Nothing in my hand I bring.” 
New School—“In my hand no price I bring.” 


Old School—See Thee on Thy judgment-throne.” 
New School—“And behold Thee on Thy throne.” 


These are but some of the variances in the text of 
a single hymn. They are brought forward here, if 
you will remember, simply to illustrate the fact that 
in the texts of the body of hymns that grew up here 
and was sung in the eighteen sixties, let us say, and 
which was the inheritance of my generation, there 
were countless divergences from the author’s text 
and variant readings even of the emendations. 
There was a striking lack of uniformity. There 
was no common text, even among Old and New 
School Presbyterians, or among Baptists or Congre- 
gationalists. 

This state of things made itself felt as an annoy- 
ance to anybody who really cared for the hymns 
and a great embarrassment when different groups of 
Christian people tried to sing together. But the 
actual situation was little apprehended then by those 
who blamed it on the compilers of their hymn books, 
and is not very generally understood even now. It 
is perhaps worthwhile therefore to ask how it hap- 


198 Christian Hymnody 


pened that the text of our hymnody fell into such a 
state. 


IV. Tue Causts or Tuts ConFrusion 


Dr. Watts was not actually the first writer who 
aimed to ameliorate the Psalms by injecting evan- 
gelical interpretations into their text. But his The 
Psalms of David imitated (1719) must be held re- 
sponsible for the project of making the whole struc- 
ture of the Psalter and the substance of its text a 
framework on which to weave an evangelical psalm- 
ody of mingled praise and British patriotism; and 
all in David’s name, now, as Watts put it, converted 
from a Jew into a Christian. In the face of such 
proposal the recent efforts of a Weymouth or a 
Moffatt to give us a Bible in modern English im- 
press us by their restraint. 

Who would imagine that in the following lines 
Dr. Watts is giving us the opening of the 75th 
Psalm: 


“Britain was doom’d to be a Slave, 

Her Frame dissolv’d; her Fears were great; 
When God a new Supporter gave 

To bear the Pillars of the State.” 


It is much easier to understand the violent pro- 
tests of Romaine and others aroused by such a han- 
dling of the sacred text than it is to explain how 
these accommodations and modernizations were 
gravely accepted by the churches in lieu of more 


The Text of the Hymns 199 


literal versions, yet still “Psalms.” But such was 
the case. 


Watts’ Psalms imitated were reprinted in the 
American colonies up to the time of the Revolution 
without change of text. But with the dawn of the 
spirit of independence his frequent allusions to 
Britain and King George wore out their welcome. I 
have copies of early American imprints in which 
they are erased and more patriotic phrases inserted 
by the pen of some one, probably a precentor. After 
the Revolution the Connecticut Association em- 
ployed Joel Barlow to revise Watts’ text and to ac- 
commodate it to American worship. After several 
editions of this, Barlow fell into such personal 
disrepute that the Association engaged President 
Dwight to make a fresh rescension. The Presby- 
terian Synod had already adopted Barlow’s revision, 
and now the General Assembly approved Dr. 
Dwight’s. Dr. Worcester soon followed with an in- 
dependent rescension of hisown. So that there were 
in circulation at once Barlow’s revision of Watts’ 
Psalms, partly superseded in Connecticut, but ad- 
hered to by Presbyterians, almost universally in 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey; Dr. Dwight’s re- 
vision, favored by Connecticut Congregationalists 
who distrusted Barlow and by many Presbyterians, 
especially in New York; and Dr. Worcester’s revi- 
sion, favored in New England, especially Massachu- 
setts. ‘The textual confusion was further increased 


2.00 Christian Hymnody 


by severai publishers who got out editions of their 
own, which adopted emendations from these three 
revisions, with some further changes, made possibly 
with a view of avoiding the infringement of copy- 
rights.” 


Turning now to Watts’ Hymns—he had ex- 
pressed in his preface, and perhaps felt, a willing- 
ness that his words should not be regarded as sacred. 
The leader of worship should be at liberty to substi- 
tute a better for an “unpleasing” word: it was the 
day when hymns were given out line by line by the 
precentor. “We are not,” he said, “confined to the 
words of any one man in our public solemnities.” 

But he could not have anticipated the drastic 
changes his texts underwent at the hands of the Eng- 
lish Presbyterians in their progress to declared Uni- 
tarianism. These Arian rescensions were still 
printed under Watts’ name, and without intimation 
that they had been changed. The protest this 
aroused among orthodox contemporaries was met by 
the claim that they, the Unitarians, were doing to 
Watts just what Watts had done to “David,” and 
what Watts himself would have done had he re- 
written the hymns according to his changed views in 
later years. An Arian text of Watts was thus set up 
and justified, in time to be a precedent for our 
Massachusetts Unitarians. 

When there was a prospect of introducing human 
compositions into Scottish Presbyterian worship, the 


The Text of the Hymns 201 


successive committees on Hymns and Paraphrases 
wrestled with the text of them just as their fathers 
had with ‘Rous’ Version,” and they produced a Scot- 
tish rescension of some of Watts’ hymns that has be- 
come more familiar than the original text. 

But in a wide circle of Independent and other 
churches Watts’ Hymns were regarded with a rever- 
ence that kept their text sacrosanct. They were 
accepted not individually but en masse, as in them- 
selves a complete hymnal; their number, their ar- 
rangement “in three books” and their text, all un- 
changed. It is striking, certainly, that in Boston as 
late as 1819, a hundred and twelve years after their 
publication, Dr. Worcester’s attempt in his Chrés- 
tian Psalmody to present some abridgment and 
alteration of the Hymns encountered a resentment 
so great that his publishers had to recall the book 
and insist on restoring ““Watts entire,” as it was then 
called, without abridgment or alteration of a word. 

And yet many of the hymns cried aloud either for 
exclusion or for some amendment; there was so 
much careless composition, so many breaches of good 
taste. How could a critical editor be expected, for 
instance, to approve an expression of the Christmas 
situation such as that of the 13th hymn of the first 
book: 


“This infant is the mighty God, 
Come to be suckled and adored.” 


Even this Dr. Worcester was compelled to restore 


202 Christian Hymnody 


_ in his later book, known as Worcester’s Watts. The 
committees who compiled the Presbyterian Psalms 
and Hymns of 1831 and 1843 handled the hymns of 
Watts more selectively and more critically, amend- 
ing where they could not admire. 


John Wesley, a warm admirer of Watts, had from 
the first felt no more hesitation in altering his text 
than in blue-penciling his brother’s hymns or adapt- 
ing the poems of George Herbert. Not even that 
deft hand could make Herbert congregational. But 
his method vindicated itself permanently in dealing 
with Watts’ ineffective 100th Psalm, beginning: 


“Sing to the Lord with joyful voice; 
Let every land his Name adore, 
The British isles shall send the noise 
Across the ocean to the shore:” 


which he transformed into the fine hymn: 


“Before Jehovah’s awful throne, 
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy.” 


John Wesley desired that the text of his brother’s 
and his own hymns, furnished in his large Collection 
of Hymns for . .. Methodists (1780) should be 
final. As for hymn tinkerers, he said in the preface, 
“I desire they would not attempt to mend them; for 
they really are not able. None of them is able to 
mend either the sense or the verse.” The reference 
here very likely was to Whitefield and Toplady, 
both of whom had altered the hymns they appro- 


The Text of the Hymns 203 


priated. After Wesley’s death his wishes were dis- 
regarded even by the publishers of his own book. 
Charles Wesley’s hymns suffered long at editorial 
hands that were all thumbs. His “Jesu, Lover of 
my soul,” being the most lyrical, suffered most, and 
only in our day has been restored to its original 
beauty. 


The poet Montgomery in his anthologies and 
hymn books covered the whole range of materials 
available at the opening of the nineteenth century 
with his purpose to elevate the literary standard of 
praise. With a self-confidence as great as Wesley’s, 
he was even freer of hand than Wesley. In editing 
Cotterill’s book of 1819° he put into circulation 
many modified texts. It was he who changed Cow- 
per’s “There is a fountain filled with blood” to 
“From Calvary’s cross a fountain flows,” and who 
made the 3-verse rescension of “Rock of Ages” that 
so long prevailed in English and American Episcopal 
Churches. He said that the time and thought he 
gave to amending the Moravian hymn book would 
have sufficed for the composition of a like quantity 
of original verse. And he predicted quite truly that 
when he was gone his own hymns would be “altered 
to suit the taste of appropriators.” 

With Montgomery we are come down to the nine- 
teenth century and to a period when hymn books 
began to multiply on all sides in the effort of en- 
larging or freshening the service of song in various 


204. Christian Hymnody 


communions. And with this multiplication of books 
the confusion of text became worse confounded. 
Partly because every compiler felt the duty of con- 
forming the materials at hand to the doctrinal be- 
liefs of his constituency. Partly also because he felt 
free to alter any expression not commending itself to 
his judgment or his whims. 
But the great cause of confusion lay deeper. 


V. Tue First ATTEMPTS TO VERIFY THE TEXTS 


All these compilers of hymn books were working 
in the dark, with very little knowledge of their ma- 
terials. Apart from reprints of Watts and Olney 
Hymns in circulation, the sources were vague, or, 
if known, quite inaccessible. A new book was made 
up from such earlier and current selections as its 
compiler had on hand. The guess-work or blunder 
of one compiler as to the authorship or text of the 
hymns became the assurance of the next. The emen- 
dations of one compiler, made freely and unacknowl- 
edged, became the original text to the one copying 
it into the later book. And for such an enterprise 
a pair of shears and a blue pencil seemed equipment 
enough. In the complacency behind such a state- 
ment as that of the compilers of the Presbyterian 
Psalms and Hymns of 1843 that they had deter- 
mined to adhere to the text of Watts’ revision of the 
Psalms, their ignorance, in view of the not remote 


The Text of the Hymns 205 


contests and excitements within their own com- 
munion, can only be described as willful. Certainly 
it was abysmal. The thought that the matter of 
preparing the Church’s songs called for anything in 
the nature of scholarship was slow to dawn. The 
Andover Faculty caught the light, and pursued it. 
Some hymn books from Dr. Park’s library with his 
annotations, now in my possession, show his concern 
and suggest how limited were his resources. 

Strange as it may seem to-day Roundell Palmer’s 
Book of Praise, published at London and New York, 
in 1862, was the first attempt to recover and restore 
the original text of our hymns. Even this could not 
have been made without the help of Daniel Sedg- 
wick, a second-hand bookseller of London. The 
flotsam of literature drifted his way, and he thought 
it worth while (he was the first who did) to collect 
and collate the old Psalm and hymn books; until, 
as Palmer said, “he knew more about them and their 
authors than any one else” then living.’ 

The Book of Praise proved an incentive to a wider 
inquiry into sources and texts. Sedgwick’s little 
shop became its center, and he the oracle to whom for 
many years the more ambitious hymnal editor was 
accustomed to resort. 

During the next thirty years the study advanced 
so far that it became possible for Dr. John Julian, 
Vicar of Wincobank, to assemble quite a group of 
scholars in preparing his Dicttonary of Hymnology, 


206 Christian Hymnody 


published in 1891. This was at once a survey of 
and a guide to what had been a very roughly charted 
territory. . 

With the Dictionary at hand the least industrious 
compiler could now give the authorship and date of 
a great number of his hymns. But that is as far as 
such a book could serve. Except in a few cases of 
unusual interest it could not within its limits repro- 
duce the texts of the hymns. And the sources re- 
main difficult of access. Dr. Julian himself was 
obliged to go to press without having seen a copy 
of the original edition of either Watts’ Hymns or his 
Hore Lyrica, and was therefore unaware of the 
many variances of text in different issues of these 
books. Not even a thesaurus has been made of Eng- 
lish hymns, such as Koch and Wackernagel have 
made of the German, and Dreves and Blume of the 
Latin. Nor is there likely to be. The mass of the 
materials is so overwhelming, and much of it so 
unrewarding from any standpoint. 

Editorial work of the right sort had been done 
before Julian’s day by such men as Charles Rogers, 
Godfrey Thring and Canon Ellerton, and in this 
country notably by Frederic M. Bird, the first ex- 
tensive collector here of the sources. 

But on the whole it is not unfair to say that the 
textual confusion and uncertainty already described 
at some length was not greatly relieved when the 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
U.S. A. gave to its Board of Publication the instruc- 


The Text of the Hymns 207 


tions which eventuated somewhat tardily in The 


Hymnal of 1895. 


VI. Tue Textuat Canons or 1895 


We are now in a position to discuss intelligently 
what we may call the textual canons of our hym- 
nody. Instead of dealing with them in the abstract 
I propose now to bring to a focus this whole matter 
of the text—its purity, its modifications, its accept- 
ability—by way of restating the actual principles 
by which the text of The Hymnal of 1895 was con- 
structed. 

Perhaps I ought to begin with an attempt to jus- 
tify such proposal. 

In view of the conditions shown, those to whom 
the project of the new hymnal was committed could 
hardly fail to feel the need of a fresh study of the 
text of the whole body of our hymnody in use, and 
the opportunity for an attempt to put it on a firmer 
basis. 

Their field was clear. They were neither helped 
nor hampered by traditional texts common to all 
who were likely to make use of the new church 
hymnal ; many of whom indeed had given up the use 
of authorized books in favor of one or another of 
Dr. Charles S. Robinson’s, with whom textual criti- 
cism was not a strong point. They were also con- 
fronted by what may be called “the awful example” 
of the new Protestant Episcopal hymnal of 1891, 


208 Christian Hymnody 


whose textual vagaries are still unexplained. It is 
enough to say here that in that book “Nearer, my 
God, to Thee” was relieved of all allusion to Jacob’s 
dream: that “My Country, ’tis of thee’ was cut in 
half, and the half joined on to “God bless our native 
land” to make a whole: and that Cowper’s “Hark! 
my soul, it is the Lord,’ was so dealt with that the 
cultured Dr. Huntington, who had loved it, was 
heard to declare he could never give it out again in 
Grace Church. 

Obviously the work on the hymns considered for 
the new book should begin, where scholarship of any 
sort begins, with a first-hand knowledge of the 
sources. And so a systematic search began for all 
the books or periodicals in which the hymns first ap- 
peared and the hymn books whose rescension of them 
completed their textual history. 

When these had been gathered up in England and 
this country to the fullest extent possible to enter- 
prise and patience, the way was opened to the con- 
struction of an acceptable text, whether by restora- 
tion or amendment. And that brings us to the 
textual principles of 1895. 


1. The General Principle of Conformity 


The general principle was that the hymns should 
be printed as their authors wrote them, so far as 
practicable. Why otherwise all this trouble and ex- 
pense in procuring the originals? 





The Text of the Hymns 209 


In our modern study of poetry, bibliographical 
and textual research has subordinated esthetic study. 
In the critical editions of the poets replacing the 
trade editions one by one, the recovery of what the 
poet actually wrote is the common motif and the 
one achievement. The comments of Dr. Johnson 
and his kind are superseded by bibliographical ad- 
justments and variorum readings, in an attempt to 
determine the true text. And this zeal for what the 
author wrote shines alike on the good and evil that 
he did. In Amy Lowell’s vast book on John Keats 
a caustic estimate of the ineptitude of some passage 
or line will be followed by a burst of indignation 
at some known or unknown hand that has ventured 
on some trifling change in it. 

Clearly this zeal for what the author wrote is the 
paramount feeling. And it is just as reasonable, and 
just as right, in hymnody as in poetry. The ethics 
of quotation support it, and very often the emenda- 
tions made in our hymns justify it. Some of these 
were conscientiously made by way of diluting poetic 
expressions to suit the palate of Dr. Watts’ “meanest 
Christian.” Some, as has been said here, represent 
no more than an editor’s whimsies. “It is astonish- 
ing,’ as Montgomery said, “how really religious 
persons will sometimes feel scruples about a turn or 
a term.” * Other of these textual changes are no 
more than the inadvertences of frequent reprintings 
and careless proof-reading. 

There is an instance of this in the version of the 


210 Christian Hymnody 


100th Psalm which is the foundation stone of our 
hymnody: 


“All people that on earth do dwell.” 


It was first printed in 1560-1, and taken into the 
English Psalter in 1564. One line had read, “We 
are his folk, he doth us feed” [his folk, his people; 
spelt folck]. Within a year the transposing of a 
single letter by a type-setter made the word “‘flock” ; 
and so the text stood for 317 years until the Rev. 
Godfrey Thring discovered the error. 

So Charles Wesley’s hymn, which he made to com- 
mence, 


“Love Divine, all loves excelling,” 
to) 


soon began to pass current as “all love excelling,” 
not because anybody thought God’s love excelled 
love itself, but only because an “‘s” dropped out. 
It happened that the restoration of this one letter 
drew forth numerous letters of protest in 1895, but 
it was right nevertheless. 

And this particular instance brings us back to the 
rightness of the general principle that what an 
author wrote is to be preferred as far as practicable. 
Especially so if the author was a poet. How in- 
tolerable have been the editorial changes in “Jesu, 
Lover of my soul” and “Lead, Kindly Light!” 


Nevertheless there is that “as far as practicable,” 
which separates and always must separate the anthol- 


The Text of the Hymns 211 


ogy from the hymn book. In a collection of poems 
for poetry’s sake the rule of fidelity of text is abso- 
lute. In a collection of hymns for congregational 
use the fidelity must be tempered by considerations 
of practical utility. There is no real use in playing 
the part of “‘superior”’ in this matter or in increasing 
the hue and cry after the fleeing “hymn-tinkerer.” 
When all has been said and the tinkerer impounded, 
the regrettable necessity of making certain adjust- 
ments of materials abides. 


2. The Limits of the Principle of Conformity 


The judicial pronouncements making the rule of 
conformity absolute come from those who admin- 
ister the theory rather than the practice of hymnody. 
They would preserve the rights of an author at all 
hazards. These rights are certainly sacred. The 
editor of 1895 tried to verify them by getting the 
author’s actual text into his own hands, and to pre- 
serve them by the simple expedient of noting be- 
neath each hymn every deviation from the original; 
that an author’s name should be attached to nothing 
he did not write. 

The deviations then allowed may conveniently be 
studied under two heads: (1) A privilege of abridg- 
ment; (2) A necessity of amendments. 


(a) AsripcmEeNnT. The privilege of making 
omissions from the text is allowable even in an 
anthology, and in a hymnal is indispensable. 


212 Christian Hymnody 


When Metrical Psalmody was made a church 
ordinance in France and the Netherlands, the prin- 
ciple of conformity to Scripture demanded that the 
Psalter be sung through in its integrity. It was 
enough to insert the word “Pause” into longer 
Psalms to indicate where practicable divisions could 
be made. 

No one who knows our modern sources could sug- 
gest a similar principle of inclusiveness. ‘Sun of 
my soul” consists of selected verses from one of the 
opening poems of Keble’s Christian Year which is 
notahymn. “Jerusalem the golden” covers sixteen 
lines of a satire that runs to nearly three thousand. 
Symond’s “These things shall be! a loftier race” 
begins with the fourth verse of a poem that has 
seventeen. The best of Whittier’s hymns are like- 
wise extracted from long poems. 

Some of our hymns contain in themselves matter 
that is extraneous or unwelcome, best disposed of by 
omission. That is true even of so great a hymn as 
“When I survey the wondrous cross”: better in four 
verses than in five. 

More commonly it is simply the undue length of 
a hymn that demands curtailment. The longest of 
all, ‘“Dies irae” escapes, because it remains in our 
hymnals as mainly a great historical monument, 
which must not be mutilated. The next in length, 
perhaps, is Byrom’s “Christians, awake! salute the 
happy morn’; desirable for its out-of-doors flavor 
and its fine music,—but what an interminable narra- 


The Text of the Hymns 204 


tive! Every editor feels called to attack the prob- 
lem of curtailment: none feels that he has solved it. 

The proper length of a hymn would seem to be a 
matter for care and good judgment. In practice it 
is too often determined by the amount of space 
available in making up the page of the hymnal. 
The rule adhered to in 1895 was to present each 
hymn with the brevity of a good lyric and with the 
integrity of a good hymn; that is to say, with sufh- 
cient fullness to preserve its message and to com- 
plete its development. 

The case is simple enough surely. A hymn has to 
make a quick impression, to carry it forward, and to 
heighten it to a spiritual uplift. A good hymn there- 
fore has these three structural characteristics: 

(1) An opening that catches the attention and 
plays the same part that a theme does in a piece of 
music; 

(2) Acontinuous development and unbroken ad- 
vance in which one verse rises on the stepping-stones 
of its predecessors ; 

(3) A climax in which the theme is triumphant, 
and the advance has won its goal. 

Now this structure is not academic but experi- 
ential. It is based on the psychology of attention 
which loses as soon as it begins to ramble. Any 
mechanical or ill-judged shortening snaps this thread 
of continuity, and so weakens the appeal upon the 
attention of the verses that remain. 

So far as the practice of singing is concerned per- 


214 Christian Hymnody 


haps the chief thing for an editor or pastor to 
remember relative to a hymn’s length is that the 
quickened pace of modern singing and the cutting 
out of once prevalent interludes make practicable a 
much fuller representation of the text than was de- 
sirable a generation or so ago. 


(b) AMENDMENT. A necessity of amendment 
remains even after selection has secured the hymns 
consonant with the beliefs and ideals of those who 
are to use the hymnal. It is very limited. The 
hymns that have touched the common heart are 
naturally those that keep to the common ground. 
The familiar hymn that caused most concern in 1895 
was Draper’s “Ye Christian heralds, go proclaim,” 
with its assurance of the immunity of missionaries 
from attack by the forces of nature. A slight modi- 
fication turned the verses into a prayer for their pro- 
tection. Monsell’s “On our way rejoicing” had a 
line, ‘“Clouds are not from Thee,” that seemed an 
inadequate interpretation of a cloudy day, recalling 
the futile debate roused by Cuthbert Hall’s Does 
God send Trouble?, and was made to read, “There 
is light in Thee.” And the line, “Let us find the 
second rest,” in Charles Wesley’s “Love Divine, all 
loves excelling” became, more acceptably, “Let us 
find the promised rest.” It would seem a pity if 
hymns so good should be debarred from general use 
for the sake of retaining an unguarded phrase. 


The Text of the Hymns 2i5 


It is possible to go so far as that with the feeling 
that the revered authors are looking down upon us 
with an understanding smile. But just how far may 
we go, say in the name of decency, in altering an 
author’s personal beliefs by way of adapting his 
work to our own uses? 


The most casuistic answer ever given to that ques- 
tion was that of James Martineau, who stands high 
among thinkers and quite supreme as a practitioner 
of the gentle art of hymn-tinkering. He expressed 
his conviction that the dogmatic content of Christian 
poetry was an accident and not an essential of its 
excellence. He said that in the book he was prepar- 
ing he aimed in his alterations of text “to give theo- 
logically a translation but in respect to piety and 
poetry the precise originals of the several authors.” ® 
The English Unitarians had made themselves some- 
what conspicuous in the art of “translation” thus in- 
dicated. And if this be the justification of their 
practice it is calculated to expand rather than to 
mollify the feeling of irritation we must all have 
experienced at finding some favorite hymn thus 
“translated” in some current Unitarian book. 

But if we find Martineau’s justification, to speak 
frankly, a bit shocking, then in what terms are we 
to justify our own appropriation of Father Faber’s 
“Faith of our fathers! living still,” and our “trans- 
lation” of its doctrine into terms of Protestant 
polemics ? 


216 Christian Hymnody 


Faber’s verses are a yearning plea for the restora- 
tion of the Roman Catholic faith of the fathers: 


“Faith of our Fathers! Mary’s prayers 
Shall win our country back to thee; 

And through the truth that comes from God 
England shall then indeed be free.” 


The question of adopting the Protestant “transla- 
tion”? was up already in 1895, but rejected, out of 
self-respect shall I say, or in the interests of sincer- 
ity? In the revision of 1911 the hymn was ad- 
mitted not from any change of judgment but in 
obedience to a demand so general as to leave no 
choice in the matter except between that of printing 
it in The Hymnal revised or on a separate leaflet 
that could be bound in with it. And so in this in- 
stance the authorized hymnal of an aggressively 
Protestant communion occupies by compulsion of its 
pastors the position of Dr. Martineau. The almost 
simultaneous adoption of the Roman Catholic lyric 
by Presbyterians and Unitarians offers an interest- 
ing study in comparative religion. 

Faber’s verses are not particularly good. They 
are redeemed poetically by the passion of his longing 
for the supremacy of the cult of the Virgin Mary. 
Protestantism may still hope for a eulogy on the 
faith of é¢s fathers that may be sung without appeal- 
ing to one’s sense of humor. 


Apart from matters of doctrine there are lines 
here and there, unhappy or unmetrical, that have 


The Text of the Hymns 27 


lingered too long. In Watts for instance—the re- 
peated “What worthless worms are we’ in his 
“Great God, how infinite art Thou!”’; “For such a 
worm as I.” in “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed” ; 
“He shall be damned that won’t believe” in his “Go, 
preach my gospel, saith the Lord.” In such cases the 
choice practically is between amendment and dis- 
card. 

In respect of metrical irregularity, the trouble is 
not with the syllabification or what are called pe- 
culiar meters. If the rhythm is clearly marked, these 
need cause no more trouble in the church than the 
irregularities of Mother Goose cause in the nursery. 
Therefore in 1895 “O come, all ye faithful” and 
“One sweetly solemn thought” were released from 
the strait-jackets into which they had been com- 
pressed, and “Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy 
kingly crown,” with Tennyson’s “Sunset and eve- 
ning star” were admitted; the latter for the first time 
in an American book. The altered form of the first 
line of Neale’s “The day of resurrection” was left 
standing because grown familiar, but the original 
“?Tis the day of resurrection” would not embarrass 
the humblest singer. 

The difficulty begins when some accent is wrong, 
or from a change of rhythm due to careless composi- 
tion. Who has not suffered from the false accent 
on “Mortals” in Charles Wesley’s “Rejoice, the 
Lord is king”? But it was left standing till 1911, 
through an exaggerated regard for the original. 


218 Christian Hymnody 


More serious are the changes of rhythm in Mon- 
sell’s ‘“Light of the world, we hail Thee”; and I am 
now fully convinced that no tune can grapple with 
them. But they were suffered there as in all books 
since, so far as I know. 

It was indeed, I now think, a fault of the text of 
1895 that it made too little use of the privilege of 
amendment. The vast preponderance of the altera- 
tions were restorations of what the author originally 
wrote or adoptions of changes already made to a 
hymn’s advantage. It was the fault of an over- 
scrupulosity in respecting the original texts, natural 
enough to a reaction from the uninformed and care- 
less methods of its predecessors. With more than 
thirty years of added experience, I should not now 
hesitate to go much further: to relieve “All hail 
the power of Jesus’ Name” of those vexing phrases; 
to recast a hymn so unwholesome as “‘O Paradise! 
O Paradise!”; and to deliver our hymnody in gen- 
eral from that preoccupation with death that broods 
over it like a shadow still in spite of all the winnow- 
ings it has had.*° 

In acknowledging its limitations it is only fair to 
add that The Hymnal of 1895 and 1911 has ex- 
erted a marked influence both in the choice of hymns 
and in their presentation. It has introduced many 
into common use. No less than five communions 
have asked formal permission to make use of its re- 
searches and its texts. And it has served elsewhere 
as an unacknowledged source-book for many hym- 


The Text of the Hymns 219 


nals; thus contributing somewhat toward the forma- 
tion of a common text. 


In this lecture I have tried to show that Hym- 
nology as well as Letters must be allowed its own 
little department of textual criticism; that our 
church songs have a textual history, and must sub- 
mit to canons framed for special ends. We have 
studied the canons governing a certain book, as 
illustrative and perhaps suggestive. But they are 
not final. Other books—other canons and other 
texts ; and a new generation will do its own mending 
when once more time shall have frayed the text. 

I should like to leave an impression that the state 
of the text is a matter of some importance. Of an 
importance only relative from a purely literary 
standpoint; not to be compared with that centering 
in a Horace or a Chaucer; but of some human in- 
terest, to say the least, and of great concern to the 
Church, when we think of the high offices our hymns 
are called upon to fill. 

For, if the teaching power of hymns is very great, 
their words are the vehicle of the teaching. If con- 
gregational feeling is better expressed through hym- 
nody than aught else, then what we have called the 
text is nothing less than that expression. 

It is a far cry to days when synods and even na- 
tional parliaments wrestled over the textual integ- 
rity or textual revision of church song. But there 
must be a middle ground between overzeal and the 


220 Christian Hymnody 


indifference into which the matter has been allowed 
to lapse in our modern parishes. 

In a long oversight of the correspondence between 
the publishing house of the Presbyterian Church and 
the authorities of parishes considering the introduc- 
tion of a new hymn book, I have been impressed by 
the absence from these parochial letters of any allu- 
sions to this matter of the text of the several books 
they may have had under comparison. Of course 
those who adopt the authorized hymnal of their 
communion may find no occasion to set forth their 
reasons. Those choosing some other book do as a 
rule mention the features that commend it. Among 
them I cannot recall a single instance in which the 
state of the text in which the hymns were offered 
for use appeared to have received any consideration 
or to have influenced the decision. The only ex- 
ception, if it be such, was the case I am about to 
refer to, of a pastor preferring a book in which the 
hymns generally had been abridged. 


3. The Latest Menace to the Integrity of Our 
Hymns 


Just now the spiritual and literary integrity ot our 
hymns is menaced by considerations that are purely 
mechanical. 

The American hymnals of the eighteen fifties set 
the fashion of printing the tune across the top of the 
page and filling the space beneath with hymns corre- 


a? 


The Text of the Hymns 221 


sponding in meter, arranged in double columns and 
closely packed. This necessitated some padding 
when the materials fell short, but also some trimming 
of the hymns when the materials were over long; and 
the length of a hymn became a typographical con- 
sideration. 

In the Episcopal Church the hymns are adopted 
by General Convention without reference to their 
tunes, and arranged without grouping the meters, 
so that when a musical edition followed a changed 
typography was required; a free and open page in 
which each hymn could be dealt with separately and 
given whatever space it required. This arrangement 
was adopted for The Hymnal of 1895, and was 
largely responsible for the welcome it received. 
Until lately all the better type of hymnals for 
church use adopted this arrangement. 

But the newer books are following the pattern 
set forth in the ephemeral song books of printing 
all the words of the hymns between the staves of 
the tunes. This expedient arose from the singer’s 
difficulty in mating the rapid and rollicking tunes to 
the words provided, the words in many cases being 
evidently little more than pegs to hang the musical 
notes on. 

There are, of course, hymns so irregular in meter 
that a real difficulty arises in setting the syllables 
to the proper notes, and in this case there does seem 
to exist a reason for printing the words parallel to 
the music; but to make this setting-up the standard 


220 Christian Hymnody 


of the hymns in general is open to three objections 
that ought to be final to any one who cares for the 
things of the spirit. 

(a) The words strung out in long lines stretching 
across the page cease to be poetry; for poetry is a 
form as well as a spirit. Even Whitman and his 
followers insist on retaining the line arrangement, 
understanding quite well that even free verse must 
have the look of poetry. No one would, if he could 
escape, read the long strings of words crowded be- 
tween the staves of these new books. And hymns — 
that are not made personally familiar by devotional 
reading have not much spiritual influence. 

(b) The unreadable words printed within the 
staves thus serve only as a libretto to the music. 
They are a direct contribution to that thoughtless 
singing of glib tunes we sometimes mistake for spir- 
itual song. Where the music is catching or so rapid 
as to require attention, I have ascertained by actual 
questioning that it is only too common to sing the 
tune through to the syllables beneath in practical 
unconsciousness of any particular meaning in the 
words. 

(c) The printing of the words between the staves 
involves the shortening of the hymns for purely 
mechanical reasons. Four verses begin to be a little 
inconvenient; five verses cause eyestrain; six verses 
are almost impracticable. 

Now a good hymn is not a collection of stanzas. 
It has an architecture symmetrical from base to 


The Text of the Hymns 2.23 


tower. It has a lyrical movement, progressing and 
culminating in a climax. The proposal to reduce 
our hymns to a four-verse common denominator was 
first made by the English Arians when the singing 
was slow and their spiritual affections cold. It 
awakened protest and approval and one or more 
editors ventured to apply the standard to Church of 
England hymn books. Hymnologists hitherto have 
regarded these ineffectual books with amusement, 
and cited them as “awful examples.” 

But now, one of the most recent church hymnals, 
apparently a successful one, is being advertised as 
desirable on the ground of setting the hymns be- 
tween the staves of the music. And on examination 
I find that of the five hundred hymns of this book 
only forty-seven have more than four verses. 


I do not know in just what words that will not 
fall short of urbanity to characterize this disregard 
of the spiritual integrity and the poetical develop- 
ment of our hymns for no reason whatever except 
for mechanical considerations. It is, of course, a 
phenomenon that has passed over from the side of 
modern religious song that is admittedly illiterate 
and demonstrably decadent. 

Let us hope it will not pass far into the fair field 
of church song. It may be a fad, but it has already 
become a menace. In the particular communion 
with which I am connected it has begun to affect the 
higher interests of church song. 


224. Christian Hymnody 


A number of parochial committees have recently 
rejected the church hymnal because not printed in 
the new manner. Even a larger number of pastors 
are asking for an edition of The Hymnal so printed; 
a thing impossible because no typographical ingenu- 
ity can force the full form of many hymns within 
the brace and have it still usable. And on the day 
before writing these words the climax arrives in a 
request from a pastor to issue an edition of The 
Hymnal, with all the hymns reduced to four verses, 
as consuming less time in worship. 

I do not like to end on so low a note, which sounds 
as though I were accusing my brethren of a lack of 
culture. So, I shall make mine own the more 
gracious words with which a distinguished bishop 
lately ended the account of his observation of some 
other modern features of Presbyterian worship: “It 
takes culture,” he said, “‘a long time to arrive at ex- 
pression.” 





LECTURE SIX 
HYMN SINGING 








LECTURE SIX 


HYMN SINGING? 
I. Tur Hymn anp tHe Hymn Tune 


So far we have been dealing in the main with 
hymnody as a body of religious verse furnishing the 
subject-matter for congregational song, without 
special reference to the tunes which are as essential 
as the hymns themselves in the actual practice of 
hymnody. In thus postponing until now any con- 
sideration of the hymn tune we have simply followed 
the logic of the situation. Any words chosen to be 
sung have a natural priority over the music they are 
to be set to and the act of singing them. 

But in the case of our hymns the logical priority 
of their words over their tunes is immensely empha- 
sized. ‘The body of its hymnody is primarily the 
sacred poetry of the Christian religion; the record 
of the highest appropriations of truth and the flowers 
of Christian experience, gathered out of all ages of 
the Church and conveyed through the appealing 
medium of verse. ‘The verse, just because it is 
lyrical, is so much the easier to read and remember. 
To a considerable body of the brotherhood hymnody 
is the only religious poetry that counts, if not indeed 


the only poetry, apart from the newspaper waifs 
227 


228 Christian Hymnody 


and strays, with which they come into personal con- 
tact. 

It is as devotional verse rather than as song that 
our hymns have entered into the spiritual experience 
of a myriad hymn lovers, to whom the church hym- 
nal has meant most as the companion of silent hours, 
the source of remembered inspirations. It would be 
as futile to contend that Christian hymns have no 
office and no message until sung in the congregation 
as to say that the poetical and spiritual uplift of 
The Book of Psalms was confined to the compara- 
tively few Jews who participated in the Temple 
worship. 

It is more to the point to say that it is only the 
precedent appropriation of the.hymn’s message by 
each individual heart that makes?its congregational 
singing worthwhile. It is the truths and experiences 
expressed in’ them that makes the music to which 
they are sung to be religious music. 

Except in intent and through association there 
can hardly be such a thing as Christian music. In- 
deed if we are to divide life into compartments and 
set apart only one as dedicated to religion, it is ques- 
tionable if there is such a thing as distinctively re- 
ligious music. There is of course carnal and spir- 
itual music. But in music that is pure in feeling and 
uplifting who can draw the line between secular 
and religious? Until it be clothed in words who 
can say whether the strains that incite us to activity 
incite us to the activities of brotherhood or the 





Hymn Singing 229 


struggle for supremacy; whether the music that 
brings visions of peace points to Nirvana or to 
Heaven? Schumann’s Nachistucke No. 4 is secular, 
I suppose; but as embodied in our tune, “Canon- 
bury,” it is a fit vehicle of religious expression. 
Sullivan’s “St. Gertrude” would serve as a march 
of the marines in P7nafore: if it is religious, it is the 
somewhat spectacular Christianity of Baring- 
Gould’s “Onward, Christian soldiers” that trans- 
mutes it. 

It is then the thought and feeling of the hymn 
that imparts anything like a specifically religious 
tone to the music to which it is set. It would seem 
to follow that any theory of hymnody that subor- 
dinates the hymn to the hymn tune is definitely un- 
christian: and that any tendency in our hymn books 
or choir lofts to treat the words of our hymns as a 
mere libretto of the music, however beautiful it be, 
should be dealt with very frankly. 


We have already before us sufficient materials 
for a rationale of the hymn tune. We have first of 
all the hymn whose message, being spiritual, is 
necessarily, like the gospel itself, a message to the 
individual soul; but whose function is fulfilled only 
by being sung in fellowship by the brotherhood who 
have apprehended the message. And so we must 
find music fit to express spiritual values in unison. 

The essentials of the hymn tune are, first, a sim- 
plicity that brings it within a congregation’s reach, 


2.30 Christian Hymnody 


and, second, the spiritual impression it makes upon 
them. And, if church song is to rise above a per- 
functory performance of an assigned duty, it is 
equally essential that the music have the quality we 
call charm,—the gift of approaching the spirit by 
the avenue of sense, gratified by the appeal of 
beauty. 


The spirituality of the hymn tune is no doubt 


overstressed in describing it as “an offering to God,” 
which on that account should be solemn and stately, 
with feeling duly repressed. The music is suffi- 
ciently spiritual if it encourages the deeper enter- 
prise of offering ourselves to God. To that end an 
element of sentimentality is allowable: probably 
necessary so long as we are human beings rather than 
academic liturgiologists. 

The essential of simplicity can hardly be over- 
stressed. The limits of a congregational tune are 
so narrowly rigid. It cannot cover the whole hymn 
anthem-wise, or adapt itself to varying verses as a 
song may. It must begin and end within the lim- 
its of a single verse, to be repeated as often as 
verses occur. It must be a clear melody that will 
carry itself without the inner parts, kept within the 
range of the average voice and the available musical 
ability. 

Great musicians feel the constraint of these lim- 
its, just as in hymn writing Tennyson felt the con- 
straint of what he called “commonplace.” It used 
to be pleasant to talk over these matters with Hora- 


Hymn Singing 231 


tio Parker, most scholarly of our composers, who 
had a part in editing several hymnals and composed 
some tunes of exceptional brilliancy. He liked to 
say in private what he is reported as saying publicly, 
that the hymn tune is quite the lowest form of music. 
He had no instinctive sympathy with congregational 
singing, which he found inartistic; and he had an 
idealist’s contempt for the common level and for 
popularity. One of his earlier tunes, “Garden 
City,” that attained wide vogue, became an offense 
to him, just as the popularity of John Hay’s early 
ballads became an irritation to that writer. Dr. 
Parker told me he would recall his tune if he 
could. 

And yet effectiveness need not be a bugbear to an 
artist. The restraint that adapts a composition to 
its appointed function is an art motive in itself. 
The miniature may exhibit qualities as sound as the 
colossal canvasses of Benjamin West, and is much 
better adapted to be cherished. Certainly Parker’s 
“Mount Sion” is, within its limits, as good music 
as his prize opera “Mona.” And one can imagine 
the hymn tune being sung on church occasions till 
the end of time, while it is doubtful if the pro- 
foundly accomplished opera, having had its official 
hearing, will again be performed. 

The moral of which things is that the Church 
must not submit to an academic decree banishing 
its hymn tunes from the realm of art, lest the tunes 
shall be satisfied to clothe themselves in the shabby 


2.32 Christian Hymnody 


garments of the outcast, or in the tinsel and motley 
of the cabaret, as our popular song has already 
learned to do. 

The Church and its pastors must really enlarge 
their minds to let the hymn tune share whatever 
concern they feel for the hymns. In the actual ad- 
ministration of hymnody as an ordinance there is no 
room for distinction between words and music. The 
hymn and its tune together compose the unit of the 
hymn as sung, and together stand or fall. An in- 
artistic tune will kill the most poetic hymn ever 
written. A dull or unwelcome tune will impart to 
the most spiritual words an atmosphere of insincerity 
that makes one’s spirit shrink. A tune adequate to 
the spiritual values of the words, interprets them. 
A great tune does more: it adds something to the 
printed words by way of suggesting things of the 
spirit unprinted between the lines. 


II. Tue Primitive SINGING 


It is a quaint providence that has preserved as a 
part of our English Bible the names of several tunes 
to which Psalms were sung, by indicating the title 
of some familiar song to the melody of which the 
Psalm was set. Thus Psalm xxii was sung to “A 
Hind in the Morning”; xlv to “The lilies”; lvi to 
“The silent Dove of those far off”; Ix to “The Lily 
of Testimony.” The ascriptions add nothing to our 


Hymn Singing 233 


knowledge of Hebrew music, but they do confer a 
grace of pedigree upon the hymn tune.* 

No Hebrew melody survives. The attempt to 
trace a connection of one or another with traditional 
synagogue melodies fails because the inherited tunes 
differ among themselves, reflecting the country and 
period of their origin. The opinion that the Hebrew 
music is continued in the ecclesiastical chant of the 
Roman Church must be relegated to the sphere of 
pious tradition. 

The Hebrew tune had no harmony in our mod- 
ern sense. It was a unison cantillation, free, and not 
measured like an Anglican chant, and following 
more closely the rhythms of the words. The melo- 
dies had individuality enough to be remembered and 
handed down; for there was no way of recording 
them. 

At the Last Supper the company would use the 
one they associated with the Hallel. Our Lord had 
no intent of imposing upon His Church His national 
music or ritual. The particular tune they used did 
not become an oral tradition, and could not have 
been made a part of the written gospel, since no 
system of notation had been invented. I have often 
thought how happy that circumstance was. If the 
music had been included in the narrative, as it would 
be in a modern phonographic record, it would in- 
evitably have acquired a sacrosanct character. It 
might have formed the basis of a system of church 


2.34. Christian Hymnody 


music that would have kept the later Church outside 
the development of modern culture. 

It would be surplusage to recall that our Lord im- 
posed no type of music upon His Church, were it not 
for the recent order of the Pope (acting as His 
Vicar) prescribing the sole use in all churches of the 
Roman obedience of that plain-song music which 
some claim as primitive. In view also, I might add, 
of the pronouncements from time to time of Prot- 
estant leaders of ecclesiastical music, venturing to lay 
out its metes and bounds with equal precision but 
with less authority. 


The singing of the Pauline Churches is often made 
the precedent for congregational song as distin- 
guished from the singing of a later time by officiants. 
The psalmody most characteristic, the charismatic, 
was certainly not congregational, but delivered solo- 
wise to a listening assembly. 

There were practical difficulties in the way of 
“conjoint singing.” There was no common musical 
standard. It is not clear that Jewish Christians 
would find the Septuagint Psalms adaptable to the 
only music they knew. Nor can we say how far 
either Jew or Gentile brought to the meetings the 
tradition of simultaneous singing. What was more 
practicable and presumably more familiar was that 
simplest type of antiphonal song in which a leader 
carries the Psalm and the congregation makes such 
responses as are agreed upon. 


ea 


Hymn Singing 2.35 


Many of the proper tunes of the Psalms had been 
lost from memory before our Lord’s time; and the 
musical ideals of the scattered Jews must have been 
already modified by Hellenistic influences. Renan * 
would infer the character of the music not so much 
from that of the synagogue as from the Eastern 
practice of to-day. He argues that a common prac- 
tice among religious communities separated since 
early times testifies to its great antiquity: 

“The chanting with which they accompanied the 
new hymns was probably that species of sobbing 
without distinct notes which is still the chant of the 
Greek Church, of the Marionites, and generally of 
Eastern Christians. It is not so much a musical 
modulation as a manner of forcing the voice and of 
emitting through the nose a sort of groaning, in 
which all the inflections follow each other rapidly. 
They perform this singular melopceia standing; the 
eye fixed, the forehead knitted, the eye-brow con- 
tracted, giving an appearance of effort. The word 
‘Amen,’ above all, is uttered in a tremulous voice 
with bodily shaking.” 


Instrumental music being still excluded from 
Greek Church worship, the same method of arguing 
back from present-day practice, would raise a pre- 
sumption that the psalmody was unaccompanied. 

Calvin at Geneva took a definite stand against it, 
and ever since “the instrumental music question” has 
vexed the Puritan conscience. In the days of Pur- 


236 Christian Hymnody 


itan ascendancy in England it wrought great icono- 
clasm. Perhaps it is settled now. But in “cases of 
conscience” one never knows. 

Certainly it is not settled by the record. St. 
Paul’s verb, “‘psallein,” is cited as implying instru- 
mental accompaniment: his “making melody in tlie 
heart” is cited as proving that the heart-strings are 
the instrument referred to. In I Cor. xiv, 7, 8, the 
Apostle refers familiarly to several musical instru- 
ments; but Dr. Porteus, debating The Organ Ques- 
tion,’ detects a note of contempt in his allusion to 
“sounding brass and tinkling cymbal” in I Cor. 
XuLels 

Perhaps we might agree that the record is non- 
commital. The enlightened imagination has indeed 
a great deal to do with the settlement of these ques- 
tions of history and of conscience. And the Chris- 
tian imagination continues to hear the blast of 
Temple trumpets making a loud noise unto Jehovah, 
and persists in giving audience not only to a voice 
from heaven as the sound of many waters, but to the 
voice of harpers harping with their harps as the new 
song arises to the throne of God itself. 


III. Prarnsonc MELopIEs 


Church music had become little more than recita- 
tion when Ambrose introduced at Milan the antiph- 
onal singing by the congregation of his new metri- 
calhymns. For tunes he reverted to the Greek scales 


Hymn Singing 2.37 


or modes; and in four of them composed those Psalm 
and hymn melodies whose rendering in the basilica 
so deeply moved the heart of St. Augustine. Read- 
ers of his Confesstons will recall the ecstasy of his 
delight and the suggestive cross-examination of that 
delight to discover if his emotions were not sensuous 
rather than spiritual. And yet the tunes were rudi- 
mental, without the charm of harmony, and the 
voice production distinctly nasal. 

On this Greek basis was developed the musical 
system of plainsong, to which the labors of the great 
Gregory have attached the name of Gregorian 
Chant. 


To any Christian with the historic sense a wor- 
ship-music with traditions so venerable makes an @ 
priori appeal: to one ecclesiastically-minded there is 
a heightening in the appeal of the only music the 
Church can claim as distinctively her own. 

When the Oxford Revival turned the English 
Church mind to Medievalism, a definite movement 
began, under Thomas Helmore’s lead, to engraft the 
Gregorian music upon English worship. This be- 
ginning, in the eighteen fifties, was premature and 
misinformed. 

With the great prominence given to it by the 
Motu proprio of Pius X in 1903, restoring the purity 
of plainsong and enjoining its use in Roman Cath- 
olic churches, a new movement has begun to intro- 
duce it into Anglican and Episcopal Churches and 


238 Christian Hymnody 


some congregations outside. The typical Church of 
England book, Hymns ancient and modern, in its 
1904 edition triples the number of plainsong melo- 
dies of the original issue of 1861. The newer Eng- 
lish Hymnal has a hundred; The New Hymnal of 
the American Episcopal Church has fourteen. 

Some traces of plainsong influence are in all hym- 
nals: in Lowell Mason’s “Hamburg” for instance. 
Some of its melodies in a popularized form are fa- 
miliar and useful: “Veni Emmanuel” for instance. 
With these possibly the plainsong movement might 
be allowed to rest for the present. It should be 
cross-examined in the interests of the congregation. 
The tunes are without the aid of harmony, written 
in unfamiliar keys, timeless and unbarred. Their 
beauty depends on adapting the free rhythm to the 
mutations of the words. They are confessedly diffi- 
cult even for trained choirs. Badly sung they are 
totally uninteresting. 

Such reports as reach me from Episcopal parishes 
are uniform in their complaint that the purer plain- 
song melodies in their Vew Hymnal shut out the 
people from participating in the hymns set to them. 
Those who are outside the line of this particular 
musical tradition may wisely heed a practical esti- 
mate by one born in it and long experienced in it. 
So I quote from the Hiéstory and Growth of Church 
Music by Father Taunton, a Roman Catholic musi- 
cian: ° 


‘Although I personally admire and take a delight 





Hymn Singing 2.39 


in joining to the best of my poor abilities in the 
Plain Chant, yet I am convinced it does not do for 
our people. It does not appeal to them, it does not 
awake in them any echoes of the religious life. The 
impressions it produces are gloom and monotony, 
and these are not religious. . . . The truth is that 
Plain Chant is suited to and can only be sung, as it 
ought to be sung, by the clergy and religious.” 

Nevertheless the wide concern of The English 
Hymnal with plainsong, suggests that the movement 
to acclimate it will have to be tried out in the 
Church of England. Should the movement win 
through it will no doubt affect the more cultivated 
congregations in non-liturgical communions, so 
oddly sensitive as they are to prevailing fashions in 
liturgical Churches. 

I hear already of one pastor whole-heartedly 
training his people in the love and practice of plain- 
song. Others of us who cherish no expectation that 
it will ever be popularized, and are conscious of no 
wish that it should be, may yet welcome such a 
training-school. No music teaches so impressively 
the rightful supremacy of holy words over musical 
notes. Its measures are the marks of punctuation: 
its accents the emphasis given to a syllable in care- 
ful speech. A training in it would give the habit of 
unremitting attention to the words of a hymn, so 
lacking at present. To me it would seem obvious 
that each melody should be applied only to the spe- 
cific hymn to which it was so carefully adapted, and 


240 Christian Hymnody 


that the hymns should be sung in the original Latin, 
whose speech-values and fluctuating rhythms cannot 
be reproduced in English. 


IV. Tue LutHeran CHOoRALEs °® 


Ambrose’s task of finding congregational tunes 
for new hymns came afresh to Martin Luther. The 
task was congenial to one who thought the singing 
of united voices “the most beautiful thing in the 
world’’; and not too difficult for one so familiar with 
the traditions and so accustomed to the performance 
of both plainsong and folk song. 

Luther invented or shaped the Protestant hymn 
tune, in that form which, as harmonized and devel- 
oped in the century following, we are accustomed to 
call the “Lutheran chorale.”’ Its essence was a sober 
and elevated but buoyant melody, in the idiom of 
the songs in which a musical people were accustomed 
to express their feelings, without any great distinc- 
tion between those definitely religious or simply 
human. — 

Whether Luther composed “‘Ein’ Feste Burg”? and 
other melodies that bear his name is a problem of no 
great import, as neither he nor his helpers sought 
originality. Their tunes were largely made up from 
phrases from plainsong or adaptations of current 
songs, some of which were already associated with 
sacred words and some with secular. He was chided 
for going so far afield as to bring folk songs into the 


Hymn Singing 241 


sanctuary. What he did was just what the editors 
of the recent English Hymnal are now so widely 
commended for doing as a relief from the academic 
monotony into which Anglican song was falling. 
And the practical effect of Luther’s course was not 
to secularize church song so much as to turn the 
current of German music into a religious channel. 

Luther’s equipment was unique, combining his 
knowledge of the rich resources, Latin and German, 
his ability to handle them, his sympathy with plain 
people, his saving common sense. The twice-told 
tale of his phenomenal success in making popular 
song his agent in spreading the gospel and heartening 
the gospelers does not need to be repeated here. 

By a gradual process culminating in the eight- 
eenth century and often attributed to the relaxed 
spiritual feelings of a cold rationalism, the chorales 
suffered a decadence like that of plainsong. Their 
rhythmical movement was often destroyed by reduc- 
ing them to notes of equal length too much drawn 
out, which impart a certain dullness in place of the 
buoyant life and motion of the original. 


In this duller form the chorales came into this 
country and have been presented to American 
churches: a fact which partly explains why so few 
have been appropriated. Lutheran worship itself 
has been a losing struggle to keep to the fore its own 
hymnody with its proper tunes, during the process 
of Americanizing successive generations of its people, 


242 Christian Hymnody 


who acquire a preference for lighter types of song 
prevailing among the people they daily associate 
with. There is also a temperamental difference be- 
tween Germans and Americans that militates 
against the adoption of the chorales, especially in 
the slower and heavier form most familiar. Most 
people respond to this great music sung en masse or 
orchestrated by Bach; but, when asked to join in, 
some difference in training or something in nervous 
make-up breeds an impatience in the vocal chords. 

Unfortunately there is no pope in Lutheranism to 
ordain the restoration of the chorale to its primitive 
beauty. In the meantime a party has arisen with 
that end in view. It is at least possible that the 
chorale restored to buoyancy would make a fresh ap- 
peal to American congregations. It is indeed worth 
hoping for. 

The extreme Lutheran restorer of the old paths 
who at times seems to imply that the chorale is the 
one and only hymn setting for our day, awakens less 
sympathy. He seems to an outsider to be putting 
the letter of Luther’s tunes in place of the freedom 
of Luther’s method. If any one thing was char- 
acteristic of his settlement of Protestant music it 
was the free spirit that could welcome a contribu- 
tion of available music from any source whatever, 
ecclesiastical or human, of a sort that could be 
adapted to holy words and consecrated by holy asso- 
ciations. 





Hymn Singing 2.43 


V. Tuer Genevan MELODIES 


Calvin’s problem at Geneva was to find popular 
melodies that would carry the difficult measures of 
Marot’s Psalms. His attempt to solve it has been 
treated by a succession of historians as a blot on the 
record of sacred music. 

What Calvin did may be summed up in a sen- 
tence. Lacking Luther’s equipment he singled out 
a competent musician, Louis Bourgeois, living at 
Geneva under needy circumstances, and put into his 
hands the preparation of suitable melodies. We 
may be quite sure that he impressed upon the musi- 
cian just the sort of thing he wanted. Hence the 
long series of hymn tunes that graced the Genevan 
Psalter of 1551. After Bourgeois had left Geneva, 
the setting of the balance of the Psalter had to be 
committed to inferior hands. 

When critics protest against Calvin’s insistence on 
unison singing, his repudiation of “curious music,” 
and his banishment of the organ, they are within 
their rights. LEvenso one could wish that they might 
add the historic sense to their critical equipment and, 
applying to Calvin’s musical settlement William 
James’ pragmatic test, acknowledge that “it 
worked.” 

Professor Dickinson in his very well-known Music 
in the History of the Western Church is somewhat 
alone in appreciation of the historical situation. 
But just what does he mean by calling the Genevan 


244. Christian Hymnody 


melodies “unemotional unison tunes that satisfied 
the stern demands of rigid zealots,” “not having in 
themselves any artistic value’? Had Professor 
Dickinson any first-hand knowledge of this branch of 
his subject ? 

Let us turn without further remark to the present 
Poet Laureate, who has added a grace to our hym- 
nody by his devotion to it, and whose Yattendon 
Hymnal is ample evidence of his musical taste. 
This is from his twice-printed Practical Discourse 
on some principles of Hymn-singing:* 

“Bourgeois turned out to be an extraordinary 
genius in melody.” Of his eighty-five tunes in the 
Genevan Psalter “almost all ... are of great 
merit and many of the highest excellence. Bour- 
geois’ tunes are masterpieces, which have remained 
popular on the continent from the first . . . and the 
best that can be imagined for solemn congregational 
singing of the kind which we might expect in Eng- 
land.” 

It was their beauty that made the Genevan Psalm- 
ody and gave it wings. If a hymnologist relied on 
the French Psalms to prove the power of the hymn 
to move and sustain the heart, a musician might 
urge that it was the tunes that won French hearts. 
He might go further and say that they carried the 
psalmody across the borders and opened the hearts 
of many who could not read French. The proof is 
that it became necessary to translate the Genevan 
Psalms into most European languages, always pre- 


Hymn Singing 245 


serving the meters and rhythms that so they might 
be sung to the original melodies.* 


The Reformed Churches, then, have a musical in- 
heritance of their own; spiritual, artistic. In Eng- 
lish-speaking communions it lies practically un- 
claimed. Among ourselves it has left no traces 
beyond a reminiscence embodied in the familiar “‘Au- 
tumn” and the survival of the 134th Psalm melody 
(our “Old Hundredth”), which, like so many 
chorales, has been reduced to notes of equal length. 

The question arises how this loss happened. It 
was the hearing of the Genevan song that inspired 
the English exiles of Mary’s reign to undertake an 
English psalm book. Why did they make so little 
use of what they heard? The answer is quite simple. 
No one of them could imitate the delicate French lyr- 
ical meters which carried the Genevan tunes. They 
were hard put to get the Psalms into English meas- 
ures which would pass for verse at all. Their dis- 
ability finally determined the character of the Eng- 
lish Psalm tune as embodied in the Sternhold and 
Hopkins Psalter of 1562; for the most part a rather 
dull performance; regrettably so because dull tunes 
are fated to become in time the mother of a dogged 
congregational hymnody. 

Is it worthwhile for English-speaking Reformed 
communions to claim a musical inheritance so dis- 
tinctive and so beautiful? Speaking for his own 
Church of England Dr. Bridges is an enthusiast for 


246 Christian Hymnody 


the revival of the Genevan melodies, as “thoroughly 
congenial to our national taste,’’ whereas the fail- 
ure to bring German chorales into general use testi- 
fies to “a difference in the melodic sense of the two 
nations.” The primary difficulty of finding words 
to fit the French measures Dr. Bridges has begun to 
meet with some lyrics of his own in his Yattendon 
Hymnal. ‘The editors of The English Hymnal have 
taken up the task, and given currency to sixteen of 
the melodies. The late Dr. Burnap of Brooklyn 
was equally anxious to become a pioneer in intro- 
ducing them into American hymnals. He found the 
books inhospitable, and the leaders of church music 
indifferent. It may possibly be that an adequate 
presentation of the Genevan Psalmody with some 
simplification of its rhythms might awaken in Re- 
formed Churches something of the pride Lutherans 
have in their great inheritance. “These tunes,” says 
the Poet Laureate, “in dignity, solemnity, pathos, 
and melodic solidity leave nothing to be desired.” 


VI. Tue Encuisu Psatm Tunes 


The Psalm tunes of the Reformation period em- 
bodied in the English Psalter of 1562 and the 
Scottish of 1564 are unharmonized, and in their 
unadorned severity of outline suggest the Puritan 
influence back of them. They conform to Cran- 
mer’s advice to Henry VIII upon translating the 
liturgy: ‘““The song made thereunto should not be 


Hymn Singing 247 


full of notes, but as near as may be for every syl- 
lable a note, so that it may be sung distinctly and 
devoutly.” 

Some effort was made to provide a proper tune 
to each Psalm; or, if not, to refer each to the melody 
of some other. The 8-line C. M. tune was greatly 
favored. Such Genevan melodies as were used were 
badly marred in adapting them to English meters, 
and the new tunes are generally uninteresting. 
Some half dozen of the 8-line tunes survive in Eng- 
lish hymnals, but are less known here. 

Either these 8-line tunes taxed peoples’ memories 
or else proved dull, for the harmonized editions of 
the Psalter that soon began to appear replaced them 
with “short tunes” of four lines. It is they to which 
we commonly refer as “the English Psalm Tunes.” 

William Damon’s edition, as early as 1579, gave 
us “Cambridge” and “Oxford,” ‘Southwell’ and 
(later) “Windsor.” Thomas Este’s in 1592 gave us 
“Winchester” and “Cheshire.” ‘Thomas Ravens- 
croft’s of 1621 merely reflected the prevailing taste 
in gathering up from various places a large reén- 
forcement of 4-line tunes. Among his sources was 
Andro Hart’s 1615 edition of the Scottish Psalter, 
in which a group of twelve appeared as “Common 
Tunes,” applicable to any C. M. Psalm; easier to 
remember than so many proper tunes. Among them 
were “Dundee” (“French”), “The Stilt,” “Dum- 
ferline,” “Martyrs” and others that played so great 
a part in Scottish life, and came to be regarded by 


248 Christian Hymnody 


many Scottish hearts as having been composed by 
David himself. 

The “‘short tune” has ever since proved effective, 
and has often dominated our church song. Never- 
theless it marked a decline and not a progress; a 
lapsing of Reformation fervor, a decadence of the 
general aptitude for music in Elizabeth’s time. 

During the long struggle between Puritan and 
Cavalier the Psalm singing fell between the two 
stools of high church and low church, and lay in a 
neglect as great as could befall an ordinance des- 
tined to survive. Even the short tunes became un- 
manageable. With the Puritan ascendancy it fell 
into a musical collapse, with Parliament wrangling 
over the version of Psalms to be authorized, and the 
Scottish Assembly putting forth “Rous’ Version” in 
16050, mostly in common meter, and (for the first 
time in Scotland) without any provision of music 
whatever. 

After the Restoration of 1660 something had to 
be done to revive the lost art of congregational song 
among a people who did not even know the tradi- 
tions of a better day. In 1671 John Playford put 
forth a folio of tunes old and new; complaining in 
his preface that nearly all the choice tunes were lost 
and out of use and that very few parish clerks even 
in London knew enough music to set them. His 
folio falling flat, six years later he compiled a set- 
ting of the old Psalms in a handy twelvemo, with 
simpler harmonies and a 4-line alternate for every 


Hymn Singing 24.9 


8-line tune. This became, and for a century con- 
tinued to be, the musical standard, although con- 
tributing very little to our present-day resources. 

Outside the Church Dr. Watts regarded his Sys- 
tem of Praise as rescue work from the intolerable 
conditions of psalmody among dissenters. But he 
depended upon the reviving power of evangelical 
sentiment, and had no thought musically of any 
thing more than getting some snap into the few tunes 
the people knew. It was other hands who found 
his vigorous hymns an encouragement of a parallel 
movement to freshen up the musical side also. To 
this we owe both words and tune of the ringing 
Easter Hymn, “Jesus Christ is risen to-day.” Its 
appearance was almost simultaneous with that of 
Watts’ Hymns and Spiritual Songs. 

Within the Church of England the New Version 
of Tate and Brady, at the end of the seventeenth 
century, had been an effort to better things by pro- 
viding Psalms more lyrical, singable to current 
tunes; but its Supplement enriched hymnody per- 
manently with three fine tunes of Dr. Croft, “St. 
Anne,” ‘‘Hanover” and “St. Matthew’s Tune.” So 
far as these were sung at all, even in London, it 
was disconnectedly, as the clerk droned out the 
Psalm line by line, and some in the congregation, 
or some singers representing it, responded with so 
much of the melody as covered the line. 

The average parish church remained unaffected by 
the New Version. It was the deplorable conditions 


250 Christian Hymnody 


of parochial song that inspired John Wesley to set 
up the Methodist singing which restored to his 
people the old fervor of Reformation song. As an 
educator Wesley taught them how to sing and as 
an administrator published several tune books. He 
used German tunes and Psalm tunes, when they 
pleased him, and, like Luther, secular songs. He 
was scrupulous both as to musical exactness and 
spiritual tone. He hated dullness but rebuked 
“horn-pipes.” The “Old Methodist Tunes” are 
later, and often more florid than he would approve. 

Any impression you may get from Green’s Short 
History of England that Wesley set all England 
a-singing Methodist hymns is altogether erroneous. 
The Wesleyan zeal for song overflowed into the 
Evangelical side of the Revival through Whitefield 
and the Countess of Huntingdon’s chapels, and even 
tapped the Church of England through the Evan- 
gelical party she inspired. But to the stodgy church- 
liness of the time the Methodist “enthusiasm” was 
simply hateful. It was distasteful even to Dr. 
Watts and dignified dissent. The field-song of the 
revivals had no more direct influence upon parochial 
psalmody than the tambourines of the Salvation 
Army have now upon English cathedrals. 

The Wesleyan side contributed little to the com- 
mon stock of tunes. But a number of our hymns 
are still associated with tunes used in Lady Hunt- 
ingdon’s chapels or Evangelical services elsewhere. 
The most striking original contribution is “Miles 


Hymn Singing 251 


Lane,” still in England the proper tune to “All hail 
the power of Jesus’ Name.” 

An abundance of eighteenth century tune books 
testify in their way to a desire to improve congre- 
gational singing. ‘The fresh tunes they offer are an 
effort to get away from the rigid outline of the old 
Psalm tune, and may be viewed as presenting a new 
type. 

This eighteenth century hymn tune has two char- 
acteristics: its freedom in using two or more notes 
to a single syllable, often expanding into trills and 
runs; and its more unconstrained use of vivacious 
triple time. The Advent tune, “Helmsley,” so 
dear to the heart of Queen Victoria, is an example, 
perhaps the more delightful for being somewhat 
questionable. 

These eighteenth century tune books must have 
found their market for the most part among dis- 
senting interests. These more or less florid tunes, 
associated in our thoughts with the English Church, 
were as a rule hers only by adoption. William 
Knapp, it is true, was parish clerk, and made an 
opportunity to introduce his useful “Wareham” into 
his Devonshire parish. But Barthélémon’s “Morn- 
ing Hymn” was the peculiar property of a London 
charity school; Wainwright’s ringing melody to 
“Christians, awake’ was an open-air Christmas 
carol; ‘‘Adeste Fideles’ was familiar only in 
Roman Catholic chapels. 

The Church of England had a minor part either in 


252 Christian Hymnody 


introducing or countenancing the more florid type 
of hymn tune that marks the eighteenth century de- 
velopment of hymnody. Dr. Burney, writing in 
1789, assures us that only two new tunes had been 
adopted in church services for a hundred years; Dr. 
Croft’s “Hanover” and the “Easter Hymn.” 


VII. American SonG 
1. Psalm Tunes in New England 


The first Protestant tunes heard in this country 
were the melodies of Calvin’s Psalter, sung in Flor- 
ida by members of Coligny’s expeditions of 1562-64, 
and which became their most lasting memorial. For 
Le Challeux tells us * that long after the break-up of 
the colony the traveler would catch strains of them 
uncouthly rendered by the native Indians. But they 
were of no influence upon American psalmody. 

The Pilgrim Fathers brought to Plymouth in 
1620 the Psalter Henry Ainsworth prepared in Hol- 
land for his English flock. Longfellow has made 
its name famous, but its music was almost forgotten 
till Professor Pratt of Hartford analyzed and an- 
notated it. In his Music of the Pilgrims* he has 
shown that a majority of the tunes were French, 
not English, and by public demonstrations has shown 
how singable they are. The French meters and the 
long verses became more and more of a hindrance 
as musical ability weakened under the hard condi- 
tions of life. But Plymouth held on to a dimin- 


Hymn Singing 2.53 


ishing remnant of its own tunes till the century’s 
end; when it resorted to the “short tunes” used in 
the Bay Colony. 

For the Puritans had brought to Massachusetts 
Bay a few copies of Ravenscroft’s setting of Stern- 
hold and Hopkins, which since 1621 had been the 
musical standard at home. Endicott’s copy is at the 
Massachusetts Historical Society; and there lately 
appeared at auction the autographed copy of Judge 
Sewall, to whose diary we owe our knowledge of the 
almost unbelievable straits to which New England 
psalmody was reduced; with the members of the 
congregation refusing to sing in time, and sometimes 
to sing the same tune. It took ten years of contro- 
versy to persuade the New England conscience that 
a regulated tune did not infringe upon individual 
freedom to worship God in one’s independent way. 

By the time it ended hardly a congregation could 
even attempt more than three or four of the forty 
C. M. tunes which a note in The Bay Psalm Book 
of 1640 had pronounced available. 

As a first step toward recovery the edition of 1698 
printed at the end a group of fifteen tunes; the 
earliest printing of music in the colonies. Some- 
where between 1714 and the twenties the Rev. John 
Tufts printed the first American tune book; very 
small because very daring, with thirty-seven tunes in 
three parts, all English. His venture found favor, 
and eleven editions were called for.“ It was fol- 
lowed in 1721 by The Grounds and Rules of Musick 


254 Christian Hymnody 


of Thomas Walter, another clergyman. My copy 
contains twenty-four tunes, and is apparently com- 
plete; but the book was really a primer. 

There is no evidence that any Psalm tune or any 
music of any kind was composed by a native of this 
country till we come to two Philadelphia contem- 
poraries: Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) an ama- 
teur who was to become a “Signer,” and James Lyon 
(1735-1794), a Princeton graduate who was to be- 
come a Presbyterian clergyman. Both composed 
tunes and published tune books, and one or the other 
is the first American composer.’ Hopkinson’s book 
of 1763 was made and printed in Philadelphia for 
the united parish of Christ Church and St. Peter’s. 
Lyon’s, probably made in Princeton, was published 
in 1761 in Philadelphia as Urania, with a dedica- 
tion to the clergy of all denominations; who re- 
sponded by calling for several editions. It contained 
some tunes of his own, but depended mostly upon 
the eighteenth century English books, some of quite 
recent date; and it was the most important thing 
of its kind as yet done in the colonies. 


2. American Hymn Tunes* 


From this date, and for a century, ending in the 
1870s, a succession of those oblong tune books, once 
so familiar, followed with a persistency that implies 
some demand at the time, and involves ample shelv- 





Hymn Singing 255 


ing and a patient mind on the part of a modern 
collector. Are they worth collecting? From a 
musical standpoint hardly so: from a historical 
standpoint quite so. They created the phases 
through which the developing hymnody found ex- 
pression in the ordinance of Congregational Song; 
and in the end they came very close to wrecking it. 
These books made and now cover the epochs of the 
American tune, and of hymn singing from the be- 
ginnings to the Gospel Hymns of the 1870s. 


(a) Brttincs’ Fucurrnc Tunes came first; 
with, as he said, “‘twenty times the power of the old 
slow tunes; each part straining for mastery and vic- 
tory.” They were introduced in a series of tune 
books ranging from 1770 to 1794. William Billings 
was a grotesque figure of a tanner, short in one leg 
and short of one eye; self-taught as far as taught, 
with an entertaining gift of self-applause and a 
touch of genius; a spiritual brother of Lord Timothy 
Dexter of Newburyport. 

By the contrast of their excitements with the tra- 
ditional dullness his tunes appealed to the rising 
spirit of revolution in the colonies. The contagion 
of their swinging melodies and the thrill of their 
fugueing ventures carried New England off its feet 
and effected a revolution in church song. His tune 
“Chester,” set to “Let tyrants shake their iron rod,” 
played a part in the Revolutionary War itself. 


256 Christian Hymnody 


“Majesty” was his masterpiece, of a jolly state- 
liness; and I defy any company to sing it, in its 
original and uncorrected form, without a thrilF 

As an offering of church song Billings’ work no 
doubt is grotesque. The permanent lesson it em- 
bodies is that if the Church lets its hymnody grow 
dull from whatever motive or the lack of any, the 
irrepressible instincts of human nature for life and 
color will take the matter of enlivening into their 
own hands, even to the extent of making the hym- 
nody ridiculous. 


(b) Lowrett Mason’s Work. Billings had 
started the New England singing school, which rap- 
idly developed into an institution. Psalmody be- 
came a recreation, and the conduct of it by itinerant 
“professors” became a profession. These men were 
the composers of the tunes and compilers of the suc- 
cession of the tune books, for which their local con- 
nections afforded a market. Some were Billings’ 
imitators: most had perforce to keep nearer the 
ground, where they were hoping evidently to es- 
tablish a school of American church music. This 
was the “New Psalmody” of the singing schools, 
now seeming so uninstructed and dull, or else so 
eccentric. 

It led to a reactionary movement, that became 
marked very early in the nineteenth century, to re- 
establish what they called the “Ancient Psalmody,” 
which might mean the earlier or the eighteenth cen- 


Hymn Singing 257 


tury Psalm tunes and newer work patterned on them. 

This uncertain, if not confused situation, in a dark 
age of music, formed Lowell Mason’s background; 
and gave an opportunity to introduce what may 
fairly be called his own type of tunes: in the choral 
style, sober, dignified, melodious, with very simple 
harmonies, and with undoubtedly a prevailing sug- 
gestion of religious feeling. 

Mason was a New Englander clerking in Savan- 
nah, when in 1822 he succeeded in having his first 
tune book printed in Boston under the patronage 
of its Handel and Haydn Society. It was they who 
brought him home under assurances of employment 
as musical leader in Boston churches. 

By training the young in day-schools, by his writ- 
ings and a long series of tune books accompanied by 
choir training in the art of using them, he improved 
the performance and established the type of Amer- 
ican psalmody. A self-made man whose own ac- 
quirements were not such as elevated him out of 
sight of the average ability of the people, he en- 
couraged a sobering of public taste so tactfully that 
his tunes still remain very much alive, and are our 
most characteristic contribution to the common stock 
of tunes having spiritual value. 

At the time he completely dominated the situa- 
tion. I have a series of letters to and fro between 
him and various editors, whose purport is a desire 
on his part to claim property in the tunes that make 
his books saleable, and on theirs an urgent plea for 


258 Christian Hymnody 


permission to incorporate his tunes in their own 
books; without which, they say, they hardly ven- 
ture to go to press. 

Mason’s tunes seem to us framed in the very in- 
terest of a congregation of limited musical acquire- 
ments. It is nevertheless true that he and his active 
co-worker, Thomas Hastings, put an emphasis upon 
choir training that inevitably tended to a separa- 
tion of interests between the skillful choir and the 
uncultivated congregation. ‘We must not here be 
understood as opposed to congregational song as 
such,” Hastings found it necessary to protest in 
his Musical Taste.“ But in his heart he was quite 
willing that, until the people acquired more of that 
taste and a greater efficiency, they should listen to 
the choir. 


(c) Tue Partor Music Type. This listening 
attitude was accentuated in the years between 1850 
and the Civil War, at the hands of foreign-born 
musicians who were brought here to take charge of 
musical interests in some parish or who sought a 
leadership in church song. They were ignorant of 
American traditions and more or less bored by 
Lowell Mason’s ascendancy. 

The listening attitude became inevitable under 
the ministrations of Henry W. Greatorex, an Eng- 
lishman brought here in the late thirties to take 
charge of the organ at Centre Church, Hartford. 
His Collection of 1851 introduced into an abound- 


Hymn Singing 259 


ing popularity the hymn tune of a daintier type of 
what may be called parlor music, the sacred quar- 
tette rather than choral music. Thus arose the 
necessity of the quartette choir to do justice to the 
music and to dominate the hymnody for many years. 

We need not share the liturgical abhorrence of the 
part-song as an expression of church song. At its 
best it may happen to enrich the family song of the 
brotherhood. It is enough to say that at the time of 
introduction it was hopelessly beyond the capacity 
of American congregations. The practical working 
of this movement was to restore in our Protestant 
churches the canon of the Council meeting at 
Laodicea in 363 to the effect that “beside the Psalm 
singers appointed thereto, who mount the ambo 
and sing out of the book, no others shall sing in 
church.” The choir rendered the hymns from the 
“book,” the oblong tune books they alone had on 
their ambo, and which were frequently changed in 
the interest of novelty. The congregation listened, 
and in many churches turned toward the choir loft 
to see as well as hear the performers. 

Of this collapse of popular song I have collected 
abundant evidence covering the Congregationalist, 
Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Lutheran commun- 
ions: In all of them it became indeed a matter 
of synodical concern. In all of them the subjuga- 
tion of the congregation had become complete. 
Seated between a pulpit asserting its supremacy in 
everything but song and a choir loft monopolizing 


260 Christian Hymnody 


the song, the people were no longer a band of com- 
mon worshipers but merely an audience attending 
a performance of worship. 


(d) Tur ConcrecaTionaL Tune Boox. If the 
hymnody was to be restored to a Protestant basis 
the first step was to begin where Luther and Calvin 
had begun; to provide suitable music and to get it 
into the hands of the people who were to sing it. 


The ground had been prepared to some extent by 
Joshua Leavitt, a specialist in revivals, in his The 
Christian Lyre, which in 1831 began to appear in 
monthly installments, with easy tunes set to each 
hymn or group of hymns. To Mason and Hastings 
it seemed to undo their work by lowering the mu- 
sical standard and appropriating undesirable secular 
melodies. They printed a rival book in 1832, Spér- 
étual Songs for social worship on the same plan, but 
somewhat more sober in tone. It is notable that 
both books regard “the psalmody of larger and more 
dignified assemblies” as a thing quite apart. 

These 2-part tunes, these little books, are only 
for families, social gatherings, prayer meetings, re- 
vivals. Both became popular, and must have per- 
suaded many Christians that they might do their 
own singing. Perhaps we may regard Leavitt’s book 
as marking an extension of camp-meeting and Meth- 
odist song into other communions, and that of Hast- 
ings and Mason as an unintended preparation for 


Hymn Singing 261 


a movement that was to put the musical hymnal into 
the hands of worshiping congregations. 

But not for some years. The church hymnal with 
tunes in our American congregations is due more to 
Henry Ward Beecher than to any other man; closely 
followed as he was by the Andover Faculty. He 
craved the inspiration of congregational singing in 
his Brooklyn church both as affording an oppor- 
tunity for expressing feeling and as creating the best 
atmosphere in which to preach. 

He proposed to his organist, Darius E. Jones, the 
preparation of a small book of hymns and tunes, 
Temple Melodies, whose success inspired the larger 
venture of the Plymouth Collection of 1855. So 
much of a pioneer was he, and so eccentric his enter- 
prise seemed that he found a publisher with great 
difficulty. But its success was immediate; and the 
congregational singing of Plymouth Church became 
a thing to be imitated. A musical edition of the 
Andover book followed in 1859, and in 1862 Dr. 
Charles S. Robinson got his hymnal with tunes into 
many Presbyterian congregations. 

These books fixed the type of the American hym- 
nal on the original Reformation lines, and through 
them congregational singing was restored. They 
hardly established a specific type of tune, beyond 
a preference for what was simple and melodious, 
with a preponderance of examples of the Lowell 
Mason order, by that time become a churchly tra- 
dition. On this general basis the American church 


262 Christian Hymnody 


tune remained, until enriched and modified by the 
influence of the Oxford Revival. 


(e) Tue Tunes oF THE Oxrorp MovEMENT 
proved so persuasive in various communions on this 
side of the water that they may conveniently be dealt 
with here, as marking a phase in the development of 
our American hymn singing. 

Their novelty lay largely in freshness of melody 
and delicacy of harmonization. They were fore- 
shadowed to some extent by the work of such men as 
Samuel S. Wesley, composer of “Aurelia,” Henry J. 
Gauntlett and Sir John Goss, but emerged full 
stream in Hymns ancient and modern of 1861 and 
its supplement of 1867; the classical hymnal of the 
Oxford Movement. Its new tunes were largely the 
work of four men: its editor, William H. Monk, 
composer of “Eventide”; John B. Dykes (a disciple 
of Mendelssohn), composer of “Lux Benigna” ; 
Joseph Barnby (a disciple of Gounod), composer of 
“O Paradise”; and Sir John Stainer, composer of 
“Blessed Home.” 

The new melodies were sentimental rather than 
strenuous, and often plaintive; supported in the 
inner parts by what may be called a sentimental use 
of close harmonies, in the manner of current part- 
song as over against the independently melodious 
counterpoint of the old Psalm tunes. They express 
more the feeling of the Oxford Revival than its reso- 
lution, the spiritual sentiment of the individual 


Hymn Singing 263 


rather than the sense of corporate worship. And 
therefore they complemented rather than replaced 
the more churchly type of tune being provided by 
Helmore, Redhead and others favoring the plain- 
song tradition. 

Such as they were, they at once won the favor of 
church musicians and the hearts of the people in 
ever-widening circles, and became the characteristic 
Victorian hymn tune. They were made familiar in 
the American Episcopal Church through importa- 
tions and reprints, and almost as soon in the Pres- 
byterian Church through the Presbyterian Hymnal 
of 1874. Until now they seem in many commun- 
ions like a part of the common inheritance. 

At length their half-century’s unbroken popular- 
ity is suffering from a reaction at the hands of church 
musicians so extreme that they are unable to express 
their disdain in terms of that moderation which 
alone is convincing. 

Mr. Geoffrey Dearmer has a paper in Music and 
Letters for January, 1925, on ‘““The Fall and Rise 
of the Hymn Tune,” in which Hymns ancient and 
modern is represented as “plunging religious music 
into an abyss” from which only now there is a move- 
ment to rescue it. He is following the lines laid out 
in Worship and Music of 1918," by Chancellor 
George Gardner, with Bishop Gore’s approval. 

In the course of his argument the Chancellor 
makes occasion to refer to “the thin and perhaps 
rowdy way” in which Dykes’ tune to “Eternal 


264. Christian Hymnody 


Father, strong to save” and Barnby’s to “For all the 
saints who from their labors rest”? express their 
sentiments. Incidentally he refers to “the vulgar 
lusciousness” or “cheap world-weariness” of other 
tunes of Dykes, and compares Barnby’s tune to 
“When morning gilds the skies” to the “clank, clank 
of machinery.” 

The offense of these tunes lies no doubt in the 
personal feeling they express. If the protest is valid 
it ought to go deeper. The real question is whether 
hymns of personal sentiment are proper for public 
worship. Granting that they are to be so used, the 
tune of personal sentiment logically follows. If 
“Abide with me” is a proper church hymn, Monk’s 
tune is its “proper tune.” It would be mere affecta- 
tion to set it to a plainsong melody. If we are to 
make a church hymn of “Lead, Kindly Light,” 
Dykes’ tune, as the Cardinal himself admitted, is 
its inevitable setting. 

Most of us probably believe in a religion of feel- 
ing and a hymnody that expresses it. So perhaps I 
may be allowed to set down a judgment of these 
tunes more favorable than that just quoted. 

They are beautiful music of their kind, but the 
kind is mainly part-song. They do not exhilarate 
our feelings, as some of the old Psalm tunes do. 
They do not greatly feed our Christian virility, but 
they bring a message distinctly spiritual. They fit 
into the spiritual interpretation of life. They have 
a curious gift of suggesting to the imagination that 


Hymn Singing 265 


a yearning after holiness is the way to God’s peace. 
In respect of the practical effect of these tunes on 
American worship, after fifty years’ experience, it 
may be enough to quote the estimate of Professor 
Dickinson in his Music in the History of the Western 
Church to the effect that the value of their influence 
in inspiring a love for that which is purest and most 
salutary in worship music has been incalculable.”® 


(f) THe Gospet Hymn emerged in the last 
quarter of the nineteenth century: a new type which 
for all practical purposes may be called a type of 
tune, more or less involving the hymn itself. We 
are indeed told just now by Dr. Lapsley in his The 
Songs of Zion™ that the development of the English 
hymn through two centuries and a half “falls into 
three clearly defined periods: The Age of Psalmody, 
The Age of the Standard Hymn, The Age of the 
Gospel Hymns.” If these are the three epochs of 
hymnody, the proper word is not “development” but 
decadence. Happily they are not. 

The Gospel Hymn was merely a modern instance 
of that lighter popular song that has always hovered 
at the borders of church worship; a rival or supple- 
ment of what Dr. Lapsley calls “the standard 
hymn.” It is the successor, in reality the outgrowth, 
of the evangelistic or camp-meeting “spiritual” of 
the early nineteen hundreds, more or less modified by 
the tripping Sunday school melodies which William 
B. Bradbury introduced, and further developed in 


266 Christian Hymnody 


the work of such men as Root, Doane, Lowry, Bliss 
and others. 

Their work was appropriated in Dwight L. 
Moody’s English campaign and his later call upon 
American churches to add evangelism to worship. 
Unable to tell one tune from another, Moody se- 
lected the Lowry-Bliss type of music because he had 
observed its emotional appeal to the masses. At 
the hands of his associate, Mr. Sankey, an untrained 
singer producing striking elocutionary effects, it com- 
bined the functions of song and homily. 

The hymns and tunes were embodied in a series 
of six books ranging from 1876 to 1891, under the 
title of Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs. Apart 
from formal church worship these books for a time 
monopolized the field, partly by the popularity of 
the songs, partly through the rigid protection of 
copyright. 

The books passed freely into the Sunday school 
and prayer meeting, and into the church worship of 
some parishes whose atmosphere was congenial. 
The extraordinary vogue of the Gospel Hymns is 
within the memory of some of us. Others can get 
some sense of it by reading Miss Greene’s Cape Cod 
Folks; the story of life in a Cape village in the 
heyday of Gospel Hymns, which run like a refrain, 
almost like a theme, through the story from begin- 
ning to end. 

The Gospel Hymn continues the form and man- 
ner of the old spiritual and is equally charged with 


Hymn Singing 267 


emotion. It has a contagious melody, pathetic or 
ringing, a frequent march or dance rhythm, and that 
peculiar thinness of effect which comes of continu- 
ing the harmony unchanged through the bar. It 
makes use of solo effects, of repeats, of burdens and 
climacteric catchwords, with of course a generous use 
of ‘that most sociable of musical devices,” the 
chorus. It is, in other words, the conventional type 
of music appealing to the crowd as distinguished 
from more thoughtful and cultivated people. 

The use of this music by the class of people to 
whose taste and attainments it fairly corresponds, 
especially in evangelistic work, was not very gener- 
ally contested even by musicians to whom it seemed 
insipid and vulgar. But the proposal to introduce it 
into church use did suggest the themes of warm de- 
bate.** Are these emotional songs really spiritual, 
and are their obvious effects an excitement of the 
senses or a religious stimulant? Should the efforts 
of the public school to improve children’s taste be 
thwarted by the Sunday school? Can the Church 
afford to sanction a standard of worship music below 
that of the educated society in which it moves? 

The debate will still go on no doubt, but the ver- 
dict becomes of less importance year by year. The 
Gospel Hymns occupy a far background now. Most 
are forgotten. Those once popular are staled by rep- 
etition. The few that may find a place in church 
hymnals convey no covert threat of an “era of Gos- 


268 Christian Hymnody 


pel Hymns,” and may or may not prove an addition 
to church song of some permanence. 


(g) THe Later Decreneracy. The more 
pressing problem is how the Church is to deal with 
the evangelistic and popular song that has taken the 
place of the Gospel Hymns, appropriating their 
name and now rivaling their popularity. 

From the day of Moody and Sankey, whose aims 
were undoubtedly spiritual, and whose royalties on 
the song books were turned into their work, the 
course of this popular song, as distinguished from 
the church hymnody, has been an uninterrupted de- 
cadence. 

Each of the evangelists who followed Moody felt 
that he too must have his personal song book. He 
could not reprint the copyrighted Gospel Hymns, 
but must look for writers and composers who could 
imitate their method and reproduce their reactions. 
When the new men failed to please the new public, 
it became necessary to resort to more sensational and 
vulgar musical effects to arouse an unresponsive 
audience. And lately it has seemed expedient to 
the great and profitable trade which has developed 
in purveying this material, to descend to the level of 
current popular song, which has never been so de- 
cadent as now, and to imitate quite frankly the 
music of the dance hall and the cabaret, the jingle, 
the rag-time, the one-step, the uproarious chorus. 

I should not have supposed, a préorz, that within 


Hymn Singing 269 


a sober-minded communion any pastor could be 
found to countenance, much less to introduce into 
the church life this fatuous verse, this degenerate 
music. Unhappily in the only communion of which 
I have much knowledge at first hand, the hymnal 
correspondence of its publishing house reveals that 
some of its pastors are making the venture of laying 
this strange offering on the altar of the Lord. Their 
self-justification, one supposes, would be taken from 
the atmosphere by which their young people are al- 
ready surrounded in daily life; from the prudence 
of giving the young all the thrills they are accus- 
tomed to in secular songs but freed from the in- 
decencies of which current song are so full. An 
interesting case of reciprocity in a North Carolina 
city is reported by Professor Poteat of Wake Forest 
College.” It was a dance at which the orchestra 
used one of these “sacred song books” to provide 
music enough for the whole evening. 

No good purpose would be served by attempting 
at the close of these lectures any minute delineation 
of a situation as unpleasant as it is prevalent in cer- 
tain sections of the South and West.” There is the 
less occasion for it since Professor Poteat has de- 
voted a whole book to the subject. His Practical 
Hymnology exposes and handles the situation with 
an aggressive frankness for which he deserves only 
thanks. It has been suggested that his book would 
be more effective by being more urbane. Urbanity 
no doubt is a grace and in debate more effective than 


270 Christian Hymnody 


invective. But Professor Poteat has lived in close 
contact with this new song, with full opportunity of 
studying its reactions in young lives. And the 
warmth of his protest is perhaps inevitable. There 
were occasions when even our Lord lost His urban- 
ity; and one can conceive the rendering of some of 
these present-day songs in His presence as possibly 
presenting such an occasion. 


VIII. Tuer INHERITANCE AND THE OUTLOOK 


In looking back over the long history of the hymn 
tune, we discern clearly enough a development as 
well as a genealogy. 

While the Gregorian music prevailed, the hymn 
tune was nothing more than an adaptation to the 
words of the hymn of the one type of ecclesiastical 
chant that covered the psalmody and other prose of 
the Daily Office. With the Reformation the mod- 
ern hymn tune began as an effort to apply con- 
temporaneous standards of popular music to sacred 
song. And on that line it has developed ever since. 
Each new phase of the hymn tune stands in a living 
relation to the generation that produced it, and ex- 
presses the ideal and idiom of the music popular at 
the period. 

The lesson of it all is that this whole process has 
neither conserved any special type of tune that is 
sacrosanct nor developed only one type that is im- 
perative by reason of spiritual fitness. The original 


Hymn Singing 271 


Jewish sacred music did not percolate through the 
Empire, and is now beyond recovery. The Grego- 
rian Chant was not originally sacred, but appro- 
priated from Greek Pagan music. And both Luther 
and Calvin embodied the form of the popular song 
and drew freely from its stores. These older tunes 
and those that followed have acquired the sacred- 
ness of holy association, but they have no traditional 
authority, as setting up a norm and model or even a 
type of what is sacred. They suggest rather the wis- 
dom of doing what our fathers did, of adapting our 
music to the needs of our own generation. 

When that is said, the whole body of the histor- 
ical hymn tunes remains with us as our inheritance, 
and the best of them are still a part of the available 
resources of congregational song. Leaving out the 
lost melodies of Israel there is hardly a type of the 
historic hymn tune that is not represented in our 
modern hymnal. The people are not indifferent to 
them or to so many of them as they can understand, 
and whose musical idiom comes natural to them. 
To an instructed and imaginative Christian the his- 
toric tunes bring a spiritual glow they only can im- 
part, a sense of the Church’s unending song. That 
is what an Anglo-Catholic gets out of the Gregorian 
Chant, and what a Scotchman gets out of Dundee. 


Some things need to be done before we can fairly 
estimate our inherited resources. The Gregorian 
melodies have at last been purified, and are now in 


252 Christian Hymnody 


the way of being tested in actual use, if indeed the 
game be worth the candle. The German chorales 
need to be restored to their original rhythms before 
we discard them as dull and heavy. The old Eng- 
lish Psalm tunes need to be rescued from the un- 
deserved neglect into which they are falling by a 
retrial in their original form. They are not prop- 
erly presented in our hymnals, and our organists and 
people have quite lost the art of handling them. 
“St. Anne” is a very great tune, but sung in modern 
speed with a sort of staccato effect, it is not a means 
of grace. 

But we ought not to be asked to revive any of the 
older tunes merely for the sake of any curious in- 
terest they may have rather than for a spiritual 
message. And we ought not to be asked to carry 
indefinitely any of the traditional American tunes 
that, for whatever reason, have ceased to inspire or 
to please, and have become luggage in the hand 
rather than melodies in our hearts. 


There are also some sources of congregational 
song that have hardly as yet been tapped. 

First of all, the wealth of Welsh tunes which ex- 
press the most warm-hearted and inspiring congre- 
gational song that is now practiced. Owing to the 
isolation of Wales linguistically and to the nine- 
teenth century contentment with Anglican and Vic- 
torian hymnody the English-speaking people until 
quite lately have given very little attention to Welsh 


Hymn Singing 2.73 


song. Its unapproached fervor and the enthusiastic 
reports brought home by the delegates to the Pres- 
byterian Alliance at Cardiff in 1925, suggest a thor- 
ough study of the Welsh hymnody at its sources. 
In the meantime Dr. Vaughan Davies in The Eng- 
lish Hymnal and in his later Students Hymnal has 
made accessible a large selection of Welsh tunes, 
some of which invite a testing with American con- 
gregations. 

The English Hymnal of 1906, just referred to, is 
the most interesting because the most experimental 
of modern hymn books, and the first that has 
threatened the overwhelming supremacy of Hymns 
ancient and modern in the Church of England since 
1861. Unfortunately it bears the hall-mark of 
highly developed Anglo-Catholicism. One of its 
striking features is its revival of no less than forty- 
two of the traditional folk song melodies of the 
English people and their adaptation to church use. 
A large body of these had been unearthed by the 
labors of the Folk Song Society, and the ability of 
their quaint and simple beauty to reach the hearts 
of English people has again been demonstrated in 
congregations adopting The English Hymnal. 
Whether the same thing would prove true of our 
American congregations is by no means assured, but 
it is one of the things waiting to be tried out. The 
English Hymnal made also a narrow use of the 
American spirituals which used to figure in our 
hymnals as ‘Western melody” and which Dr, 


274. Christian Hymnody 


Lorenz likes to think of as our American folk songs. 
Upon them, at all events, it seems reasonably sure 
that the “Negro spirituals” now attracting so much 
attention were based. 


The general state of congregational song affords 
no real ground for discouragement. But, compared 
to what it has been and what it may be, it is re- 
spectable and comely rather than satisfying. There 
is a great deal of half-hearted and perfunctory 
singing in our services ; an atmosphere of indifference 
or inattention from which it must be rescued. 

It were quite vain to deny that our pastors are to 
a considerable degree responsible for this. The in- 
difference in the pews is very apt to be the reflection 
of the indifference in the pulpit. Wherever the ex- 
treme liturgical or artistic ideal of worship prevails 
there develops a disposition to delegate its expres- 
sion to the choir; especially to the boy-choir, whose 
only fault is that it is so pleasant to listen to. But 
the extreme homiletical ideal of worship is quite as 
detrimental. If a preacher obviously intends to 
dominate the worship, he is just as obviously encour- 
aging in his people that habit of becoming listeners 
rather than participants, which so easily develops 
into a habit of becoming listless, from which it is 
hard to rouse them. 

When the pastor tries to do so by pulpit appeals 
urging the Christian duty of joining in singing the 
praises of God, after the fashion set by William Law 


Hymn Singing 275 


in his Seréous Call, he is beginning his belated re- 
form at the wrong end. Surely there are Christian 
duties enough without adding that of singing to their 
number. The spirit of song is spontaneous, and 
outside the sphere of ethics. The condition prec- 
edent is not a sense of duty disturbing the con- 
science, but the word of Christ dwelling richly in the 
heart that breaks forth spontaneously into songs of 
thanksgiving and gratitude and fellowship. Its 
utterance will rise above the sphere of duty and 
flourish in the atmosphere of spiritual pleasure. 
“Sing praises unto His Name; for it is pleasant.” 


And so we get at the two-fold function of the 
church hymnal; that of deepening the spiritual life 
out of which song flows, and of lifting Christian 
hymnody out of the sphere of duty by encouraging 
the spirit of song. 

The immediate need surely is to get the church 
hymnal back into the hands of the people where 
Luther and Calvin first put it. At present it is 
hardly more than a part of the furniture of the pew 
racks in our churches. As regards hymnody the con- 
gregation is very much where it would be in knowl- 
edge of Scripture if there were no Bibles except 
those in the pulpit or the lectern. Very few of the 
people now have hymnals of their own. They do 
not read the poetry devotionally; they do not sing 
the tunes at home or in social gatherings: they have 
no familiarity with either and consequently little 


276 Christian Hymnody 


love for them. When the hymn is given out in 
church they often start to sing without knowing 
what is coming or whether it expresses their per- 
sonal feelings in any way; and they can hardly be 
expected so to sing either in the Spirit or with un- 
derstanding. For they are continually singing a 
strange song. 

So inspiring and uplifting can the spiritual min- 
istry of poetry and music to human lives be made 
that I venture to propose this task and opportunity 
of getting the hymnal back into the homes and hands 
and hearts of Christian people as one of the most re- 
warding that can engage us. 

Before this can be done we must agree that the 
hymnal itself shall be made more lovable than it is. 
In the desire to incorporate the traditional as well as 
the timely, to gratify a wide range of taste and opin- 
ion, and especially to cover every possible occasion 
and sermon theme, the church hymnal has become 
cumbersome to the hands in which we would place it, 
too encylopedic and utilitarian to appeal to the 
heart. 

It is the demand of our pastors, who require all 
sorts of hymns for all sorts of purposes, and not the 
judgment of the compilers, that makes our hymnals 
so big and pads them with so much that is dull. 
This encyclopedic range may be a pastoral con- 
venience but it is a spiritual blunder. So much ma- 
terial discourages devotion and defeats the memory ; 
and a good deal of it transcends the true sphere of 


Hymn Singing 277 


song. It is regrettable that so many pastors prefer 
the prosaic hymns to those that are lyrical, and, if 
the reports from the parishes are true, only too often 
confine their people within a dull and monotonous 
round of them. 

I like to foresee a time when our pastors shall dis- 
cover that the highest utilitarianism lies in culti- 
vating the spirit of song for its own sake. For the 
spirit of Christian song is simply the Holy Spirit 
Himself, making melody in the heart. 





* Ran 2 + 





Sl Si 


NOTES 


LECTURE I 


The title of Dean Church’s lectures of 1874. 

On the 148th Psalm. 

It can be read in Skene’s The Lord’s Supper and the Passover 
Ritual (a translation of Bickell’s Messe und Pascha), Edin- 
burgh, 1891, p. 207. 

Cf. Encyclopedia Biblica, art. “Hallel”; and Schtirer, The 
Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ (English trans., 
Div. ii, vol. i, p. 291). Edinburgh, 1885. The Hallel as a 
whole covered Psalms 115-118. 

Skene, ut supra, pp. 174, 207. 

The Expositor, ’85b, 3. 

In preface to his (Cambridge Bible) Commentary on St. Luke. 
The Presbyterian, Edinburgh, February 1, 1872. 

Some Thoughts concerning the present Revival in New Eng- 
land, Boston, 1742, p. 181. 

Robert Baxter’s Narrative of Facts characterizing the Super- 
natural Manifestations is scarce. The substance of his testi- 
mony is in Dean Stanley’s Corinthians (Ed. 1882, pp. 252 ff.). 


. Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New Eng- 


land, Boston, 1743, p. 126. 

A faithful Narrative of the surprising Work of God... in 
Northampton; 2nd edition, London, 1738, p. 15. 

John McPherson, Commentary on Ephesians, Edinburgh, 1892, 


Pp. 390. 

The Atheneum, April 11, April 18, May 30, 1914. 

The ae and Psalms of Solomon, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 
191, p. 80. 

Das apostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche, 2nd edition, 
Freiburg, 1892; English trans., London, 1895, vol. ii, p. 259 ff. 
Walter Lowrie, The Church and its Organization, Longmans, 
Green and Co., 1904, p. 213. Principal Lindsay also follows 
Weizsacher in his The Church and its Ministry, London, 


1902, D. 45. 
LECTURE II 


The Stromata, book vii, chap. 7. 
Ibid, chap. 8. That new hymns of human composition as well 
as Psalms are referred to, Clement makes plain by remarking 
incidentally that “an unworthy opinion of God preserves no 
piety either in hymns or sermons or writings or dogmas” 
(chap. 7). 

281 


282 Christian Hymnody 


3. Ad uxorii, book ii, chap. 8. 

4. De spectaculis, chap. 29. 

5. De carne Christi, chap. 17, 20. 

6. Socrates, H. E., book vi, chap. 8. 

7. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, 73. 

8. It appears in the list of works on the back of the Hippolytus- 
statue. 

9g. Eusebius, H. E., vii, 24, 4. 

10. Jbid., v, 28, 5. 

11. De Spiritu Sancto, 73. 

12. Amherst Papyri, part i, No. 2. 

13. In his Heresies, 67. 

14. Ep. x, 96. 

15. Apology, chap. 39. 

16. Book 11, chap. 4. 

17. Apol., 1, 13. 

18. Eusebius, Ve 20; 05 

19. 53rd Homily on Heretics. 

20. Referred to in the Muratorian Fragment. 

BI. wOOCcrates alice vines. 

22. Gen. Hist. of Christian sate and Church, Torrey’s trans., 
ed. 1871, vol. ii, p. 354, n. 

23. Mgr. Pierre Batiffol, Ffidtaew of the Roman Breviary, rev. 
English ed., Longmans, 1912, p. 8. 

24. Sozomen, H. E., viii, 8, 1-5. 

25. Vide “Africa and the Beginnings of Christian Latin Litera- 
ture” in Am. Jour. of Theology, Jan. 1907. 

26. Cf. H. Leclercq, L’Afrique Chretienne, Paris, 1004, vol. i, 
chap. 5, “Les Dialectes.” 

27. Ibid., appendix. 

28. Comm. in Ep. ad Gal. ii, pref. 

29. Tertullian, De Jejunio, chap. 10. 

30. Cf. Batiffol, op. cit., chap. 1; and Duchesne, Christian Wor- 
ship, English trans., London, 1903, chap. 16. 

31. The texts of this and the following rules and canons are 
conveniently gathered in U. Chevalier, Poesie liturgique, 
Tournai, 1894. 

32. For possible exceptions, see Batiffol, p. 140. On this point, and 
on the monastic concern with hymns, cf. W. C. Bishop, The 
a ozarabic and Ambrosian Rites, London, 1924, pp. 56, 62, 65, 

7, 

33. The hymns of the Roman Breviary are admirably presented 
in Matthew Britt, The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal, 
Benziger Brothers, 1922. 

34. For the Sequence any history of the Mass may be consulted; 
and, for detailed information, John Mason Neale, Essays in 
Liturgiology and Church History, London, 1863, pp. 359-370; 
and Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, art. “Sequence.” 

35. The German Mass, 1526. 

36. Formula Misse, 1523. 

37. Ibid. 


38. 


Preface of 1545. 


39. 


Notes 283 


Luther’s hymns are to be found in innumerable editions; 
accessibly in James F. Lambert, Luther’s Hymns, Phila., 
General Council PublIn. House, 1917; with translations, the 
hymn book prefaces and other interesting matter. The 
prefaces may also be found in R. Massie, Martin Luther’s 
Spiritual Songs, London, 1854. Luther’s various liturgical 
proposals, on which his use of hymns in public worship de- 
pends, are translated and annotated in Richard and Painter, 
Christian Worship: its principles and forms, 2nd ed., revised, 
Philadelphia, [1908]. The Lutheran chorale is discussed in the 
last of the present lectures. 


. Formula Misse. 
. Ibid. 


Preface of 1525. 

The letter to Spalatin. 

Christoffel, Huldrich Zwingli, Elberfield, 1857. English trans., 
Edinburgh, 1858, p. 150, n. 


. Calvini Opera, ed. 1863 seq., vol. Xa, 12. , 
. “Alterum ut ad publicas orationes psalmorum cantio ad- 


hibeatur.” 

The author gave a much more detailed account of the origins 
of the Reformed Psalmody in a former Stone lecture, printed 
in Journal of The Presbyterian Hist. Soc., Phila., for March 
and June, 1909. 

Calvini Opera, vi, 165-172. 

This phase of the subject is popularly portrayed in Prothero, 
The Psalms in Human Life, var. eds. 


. Cf. Quick, Synodicon, vol. i, p. xiii. 
. The process of transition from a strict Psalmody to an evan- 


gelical hymnody in English-speaking Churches is fully set 
forth in the author’s The English Hymn, N. Y. and Phila., 
IQI5. 


LECTURE III 


Zachariae Ferrerit Vicent. Pont. Gardien. Hymni Novi 
Ecclesiastici ivxta veram Metri et Latinitatis Normam a 
Beatiss. Patre Claemente VII. Pont. Max. vt in divinis 
quisque eis vti possit approbati et novis Ludovic Vicentini ac 
Lavtitit Pervsini Characteribus in Lucem traditi. Sanctum ac 
necessarium Opus. Breviarivm ecclesiasticum ab eodem Zach. 
Pont. longe brevivs et facilivs redditum, et ab omni errore 
pergatum propediem exibit. [colophon : ] Impressum hoc 
diuinum Opus Rome in edibus Ludouici Vicentini et Lautitii 
Perusini, non sine Priuilegio—Kal. Febru. M.D. XXV 

Mgr. Batiffol (op. cit.) discusses Ferreri and the human- 
ist Breviary promised on the title-page in his charming way; 
and to his translator I am indebted for the English version of 
the lines quoted. 
The English Psalter (commonly called Sternhold and Hopkins, 
or the Old Version) appeared in its completed form from the 
press of John Day at London, as The whole Booke of Psalmes, 


284 Christian Hymnody 


OY Dw 


collected into Englysh metre by T. Starnhold, I. Hopkins & 
others: conferred with the Ebrue, with apt Notes to sing them 
withal, Faithfully perused and alowed according to thordre 
appointed in the Quenes maiesties Iniunctions. Very mete to 
be vsed of all sortes of people priuately for their solace & 
comfort: laying apart all ungodly Songes and Ballades, which 
tende only to the norishing of vyce, and corrupting of youth, 
[Followed by two texts and imprint]. An, 1562. 

A new Version of the Psalms of David, fitted to the tunes 
used in churches. By N. Tate and N. Brady. London, 1696. 
The Psalms of David in meeter. Newly translated, and dili- 
gently compared with the originall Text, and former trans- 
lations: More plain, smooth, and agreeable ta the Text, than 
any heretofore. Allowed by the Authority of the Generall 
Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, and appointed to be sung 
in Congregations and Families. Edinburgh, Printed by Evan 
Tyler, Printer to the King’s most Excellent Majesty, 1650. 
This came to be familiarly known as “Rous’ Version.” 

The Muse in Council: being essays on Poets and Poetry, 
Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1925; pp. 60 ff. 

George yar inca A History of English Prosody, vol. ii, Mac- 
millan, 1908, p. 

The English pend Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1913, p. 6. 

It is worth while to remember that Arnold’s respect for John 
Ellerton’s hymns, his tribute to Watts’ “When I survey the 
wondrous cross” just before the hand of death touched him, 
are just as real, as sincere, as his personal distaste for “Nearer, 
my God, to Thee.” His criticisms arose out of the conviction 
that hymns are to be judged as poetry, to be criticized for 
their violations of poetic canons. So elevated a point of view 
is inspiring, to say the least of it, and any critical remarks its 
occupant cares to send down are not disposed of by the 
fancied discovery of a manner of condescension. They ought 
to be welcomed. 


LECTURE IV 


“TAmbrose’s] hymns were used to convey correct Catholic 
doctrine to the minds and hearts of his people.” Matthew 
Britt, op. ctt., p. 21. 

This definition, so far as it is true, is itself the echo of a 
great soul, the late Richard Holt Hutton. 

In some hymnals the editors think it needful to print the 
people’s part in the responsive Psalter in large capitals, like a 
child’s primer. A prominent pastor writes me of the im- 
portance of getting the entire hymn on a single page, even 
though the left hand page at a given opening, saying that his 
people close the books as soon as the bottom of a page is 
reached. 

A Collection of Hymns, New York, 1831. 

One who questions this may revert to Dr. Alexander’s preface 
of 1831: “The systematic method of arranging hymns accord- 


GO NE ON 


Notes 285 


ing to their subjects, as commonly pursued, is incapable of 
being rendered perfect or even satisfactory; for it often 
happens, that in the same hymn there is such a diversity, as 
to the nature of the emotions and sentiments expressed, that 
it cannot with propriety be referred to any one head.” Dr. 
Alexander proceeds to arrange his 742 hymns alphabetically 
according to the opening word—an arrangement that appeals 
to the eye readily until we reach those beginning with “Oh.” 


. Anna Robeson Burr, Religious Confessions and Confessants, 


Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1914. 


. Since the date of these lectures I have endeavored to em- 


body this mission of good cheer in a hymnal, Christian Song, 
New York and Philadelphia, 1926. 


. Clarence Edward Macartney, Reconciliation sivounh Jesus 


Christ, Office of the Gen. Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the 
Wier tie 11028), fi D: 


LECTURE V 


. Hymns and Choirs: the matter and the manner of the Service 


of Song, Andover, 1860. 


. Boston, 1857. 
. P. 202 ff. “The Old School Collection” was the Psalms and 


Hymns of 1843. 

London, 1787. Often reprinted and widely used here. 

See my “American Revisions of Watts’ Psalms” in Journal 
of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, for June 
and September, 1903, and separately. 


. A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for public and private use, 


adapted to the Church of England, Sheffield, 1810. 


. Memorials: part i, Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne, Mac- 


millan, 1896, vol. ii, p. 464. 


. Memoirs, by Holland and Everett, London, 1855, vol. iv, p. 70. 
. Preface to Hymns for the Christian Church and Home, 1840, 


p. xi. 
. All these things I have since attempted in Christian Song al- 


ready referred to. 


LECTURE VI 


. The general course of the development of Church Music may 


be followed in Edward Dickinson, Music in the History of the 
Western Church, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902. 
Edmund S. Lorenz, Church Music: What a Minister should 
know about it, F. H. Revell Co. [1923], aims to meet the needs 
of Seminary classes in Church Music. The best account of 
the history of Psalm and hymn singing in England is the 
introduction to Hymns ancient and modern: historical edi- 
tion, (in folio), London, 1909. See also Grove’s Dictionary of 
Music, art. Psalmody. James T. Lightwood, Hymn Tunes 
and their Story, London [1905]; and J. Spencer Curwen, 
Studies in Worship Music, Ist and 2nd series, London, n.d., 


286. Christian Hymnody 


2s 


are interesting and dependable. Books such as Brown and 
Butterworth, The Story of Hymns and Tunes, Am. Tract. 
Soc., New York [n.d.] should be avoided or used with greatest 
care, 

John E, Peters, The Psalms as Liturgies, Macmillan, 1922, p. 
49, puts the meaning of these titles to the question. 

Les ApGtres, Paris, 1866, pp. 99 f. 


. The Organ Question. Statements by Dr. Ritchie and Dr. 


Porteus, for and against the use of the Organ in Public Wor- 
ship in the proceedings of the Presbytery of Glasgow, 1807-8, 
Edinburgh, 1856, p 


5. Ethelred L. Taunton, The History and Growth of Church 


Music, London, Burns and Oates, n.d., pp. 107 f. 

Archibald W. Wilson, The Chorales: their origin and influ- 
ence, The Faith Press, London, 1920, is a recent and useful 
study of them. 


7. In The Journal of Theological Studies for October, 1899, and 


10. 


I2, 


13. 


14. 


separately by R. H. Blackwell, Oxford, Igor. 

There is a bibliography in F. Bovet, Histoire du Psautier des 
Eglises Réformées, Neuchatel, 1872; continued in O. Douen, 
Clément Marot et le Psautier Huguenot, Paris, 1878-9. The 
last named is the fullest presentation of the Genevan melodies 
and the subsequent harmonizations of them. 


. Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to 


America, New York [1885], vol. i, pp. 37, 68. 
The Music of the Pilgrims: a description of the Psalm-book 
brought to Plymouth in 1620, Boston, Oliver Ditson Co. [1921]. 


. An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm-tunes, in a plain 


easy method. With a collection of tunes in three parts. 
The date of original publication is uncertain. My copy is a 
fifth edition of 1726, 

See O. G. Sonneck, Francis Hopkinson and James Lyon, 
Washington, D.C., 1905; which contains an analysis of Urania. 
For the earlier music of the immigrant mystics, Johannes 
Kelpius and Conrad Beissel in connection with the Wissahickon 
and Ephrata communities, see Church Music and Musical Life 
in Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia: 
Penna. Soc. of Colonial Dames, 1926, etc.; and Julius F. 
Sachse, The Music of the Ephrata Cloister, Lancaster, 1903. 
Waldo S. Pratt, in American Supplement to Grove’s Diction- 
ary of Music and Musicians, has given special attention to the 
tune writers and tune books in his trustworthy way. Frank 
J. Metcalf, American Psalmody or Titles of books containing 
tunes printed in America from 1721 to 1820, New York, Chas. 
F. Heartman, 1917, supersedes James Warrington, Short Titles 
of books relating to the History and Practice of Psalmody in 
the U. S., Philadelphia, 1898. Metcalf’s American Writers 
and Compilers of sacred Music, The Abingdon Press [1925], 
is valuable both for biography and bibliography. 

Dissertation on Musical Taste, Albany, 1822; rev. and en- 
larged ed., N. Y., 1853. During his prolonged campaign for 
better church music, Hastings published numerous books and 


—-——— —_ i i_ 


19. 


20. 


Notes 287 


review articles, as well as tune books; and the memory of 
a useful man should not be overshadowed by the greater fame 
of Lowell Mason. But he will live as the composer of 
“Toplady.” 

Worship and Music: suggestions for Clergy and Choirmasters, 
Re pues Gardner, M.A., Mus. Bac., London, S.P.C.K., 1018. 


be Pa ads 
7. The Songs of Zion: a brief study of our Hymns, by R. A. 


edie D.D., Presb. Com. of Publication, Richmond, Va. 
1925]. 


. Those who favor the use of these songs in worship will find 


the points of Dr. David R. Breed’s objections to them in his 
The History and Use of Hymns and Hymn-tunes, Revell, 1903. 
Those who oppose their use may encounter a warm advocate 
of the employment of the better of them in almost any one 
of Dr. Lorenz’s books on Church Music. And the whole 
matter is sanely and impartially presented in Waldo S. Pratt, 
Musical Ministries in the Church, Revell, 1901. 

Herbert McNeill Poteat, Practical Hymnology, Boston 
[1921], p. 69,n. 

“Thousands of our churches and Sunday schools are using 
the same sort of music exactly as is jingled forth by electric 
piano at the picture house, the pony ballet in the theater, and 
the jazz orchestra in the public dance hall.” Poteat, p. 69. 





INDEX 


Abney, Lady, 112 

Abridgement, 211 

Acta Johannis, 28 

Addison, Joseph, 125 

Admonition, 43, 149 

Advent, 178 

Africa, North, 67 

Afrique Chretienne, L’, 282 

Ainsworth, Henry, 252 

Alexander, Archibald, 148, 
149, 284 

James W., 180 

All-Saints, 170, 175 

Alteration of texts. 
Tinkering 

Ambrose, 23, 68-70, 72, 73; 
74, 114, 236, 284 

Ambrosiani, 70, 72, 77 

American Psalmody: Amer- 
ican Writers and Com- 
posers, 286 

Amherst Collection, 61 

Andover Faculty, 192, 194, 
205, 261 

Anglican chant, 233 

hymn tunes, 263 

Antioch, 62, 63 

Antiphonal singing, 28, 69, 
234, 236 

Apocalypse, The, 51-53 

Apostles’ Creed, 80, 81, 145 

A potres, Les, 286 

Arian hymnody, 64, 67 

Arnold, Matthew, 99, 109, 
133, 134, 284 

Art, 133, 138, 231 


See 


289 


Ascension hymns, 182 

Athenogenes, 60 

Auber, Harriet, 182 

Augustine, St., 23, 68, 70, 
141, 237 

Aurelian of Arles, 72 

Austin, John, 109, 110 


Bacon’s Psalms, 104 

Baird, Charles W., 286 

Balfour, Lord, 158 

Bangor Antiphonary, 73 

Bardesenes, 64 

Baring-Gould, Sabine, 166, 
229 

Barlow, Joel, 199 


Barnby, Sir Joseph, 164, 
262 

Barthélémon, Francois H., 
251 


Barton, William, 109 

Basil, 61 

Basilicas, 43, 65, 68, 70, 171 

Batiffol, Pierre, 66, 282, 283 

Baxter, Richard, 110 

Robert, 281 

Bay Psalm Book, 189, 190, 
253 

Beauty, 122, 137 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 196, 
261 

Benedict of Nursia, 72, 74 

Benedictus, 24 

Benson, Archbishop, 115 

Bernard of Morlaix, 169 

Berne, 80, 81 


290 


Berridge, John, 123 

Beza, Theodore, 102 

Bickell, Prof., 29, 281 

Billings, William, 255, 256 

Bird, Frederick M., 206 

Bishop, W. C., 282 

Bithynia, 46, 61, 62 

Blake, William, 130 

Bliss, Philip P., 266 

Blume, Clemens, 206 

Bonar, Horatius, f0, 152, 
178 

Book of Common Order, 29, 
2 

Book of Common Prayer, 
BA Als 102, 192.0 To 

Book of Praise, 205 

Bourgeois, Louis, 243-246, 
247, 252 

Bovet, Felix, 286 

Boy Choirs, 274 

Bradbury, William B., 265 

Braga, Council of, 72 

Breed, David R., 287 

Breviary, 24, 66, 70, 71, 73, 
100, 172, 282 

Bridges, Robert, 244-246 

Britt, Matthew, 282 

Brooks, Phillips, 94, 179 

Brown and Butterworth, 286 

Browning, Robert, 104 

Brownlie, John, 24 

Bryant’s hymns, 134 

Burnap, U. C., 246 

Burney, Dr., 252 

Burr, Anna R., 155, 285 

Byrom, John, 117, 212 

Byron, Lord, 128 


Calvin, John: 
as reformer, 79 


Christian Hymnody 


Calvin, John: 
and hymns, 73, 79-85 
and poetry, 100, 101 
and music, 235, 243 
on Colossians, 84 
Manner of Lora’s Supper, 
41 
Camp-meeting song, 34, 260, 
265 
Campbell, Thomas, 128 
Campion, Thomas, 106 
Canonical hours, 70 
Canticles, 25, 30, 74, 87 
Cape Cod Folks, 266 
Carthage, 67, 68 
Catechism, 19 
Cennick, John, 123, 156 
Charismata, 35-37 
Chauncey, Charles, 38, 281 
Cheerfulness, 931,132,070, 
157-159 
Chevalier, Ulysses, 282 
Choirs, 66, 258, 259, 274 
Chorales, 240-242, 272 
Christian Examiner, 
111 
Christian Hymnology, 23 
Christian Lyre, The, 260 
Christian music, 228 
Christian Psalmist, 
Wa eas bay 
Christian Psalmody, 201 
Christian Song, 285 
Christian Worship (Richard 
and Painter), 283; 
(Duchesne), 282 
Christian Year, The, 127, 


The, 


The, 


212 
Christian Year, The, 74, 
170-182 


Christmas, 174 


Index 


Christmas hymns, 179 
Chrysostom, 67 
Church, The, in hymnody, 
50, 145, 166, 168, 184 
Church, Richard W., 281 
Church Music, 285 
Churchly hymns, 
184 
Classification of hymns, 150, 
284 
Clement of Alexandria, 59, 
61, 62 
Clement VII, 100 
Coleridge, S. T., 134 
Coligny, 252 
Collection of Hymns for 
Methodists, 116, 202 
Commandments, The, 81, 
144 
“Common Tunes,” 247 
Communion hymns, 27, 28, 
40-42, 62, 164, 173 
Communion service 
Calvin’s, 41 
Knox’s, 29, 42 
in Directory for worship, 
29, 42 


American Presbyterian, 29 


165-170, 


in Book of Common 
Prayer, 41,172 © 
Comparative Hymnology, 
22; 23 


Conder, Josiah, 106 
Confession of sin, 161 
the “General,” 162 
Congregational Hymn Book, 
193 
Been consi Singing. See 
“Singing” 
Congregationalist hymnody 
in England, 88, 249 


291 


Congregationalist hymnody 
in New England, 189, 
196, 199, 252-258 

Connecticut Association, 196, 

199° 

Constantine, 43 

Conway, Moncure D., 115 

Corinth, 35, 39 

Cotterill, Thomas, 203 

Cowper, William, 93, 123, 

126, 156 

Coxe, Arthur Cleveland, 167 

Cranmer, Thomas, 246 

Crashaw, Richard, 108 

Criticism of hymns, 132 

Crossman, Samuel, 109 

Curwen, J. Spencer, 285 


Daily Office, The, 24, 65, 
FAs F380 74a) 1590177: 
270 

Damon, William, 247 

“David’s Tunes,” 248 

Davies, Samuel, 151 

Vaughan, 273 

De Witt (Professor), John, 
147 

Dearmer, Geoffrey, 263 

Death’s shadow on hym- 
nody, 32, 158, 176 

Degeneracy, 268-270 

Dexter, Henry M., 59 

Timothy, 255 

Dickinson, Edward, 
244, 265, 285 

Dictionary of Hymnology, 
17, 205 

Dictionary of Music, 285 

Dictionary of Religion and 
Ethics, 22 

Didache, 41, 47, 62 


243, 


292 Christian 
Directory for Worship 
Scottish, 29, 42, 175 
American, 21, 29, 42, 163, 

175, 191 

Dionysius, 60 

Doane, W. H., 266 

Doctrinal Hymn, 143 

Doddridge, Philip, 114, 125, 
151 [214 

Does God Send Trouble?, 

Douen, O., 286 

Doxology (L. M.), 177 

Dream of Gerontius, 144 

Dreves, G. M., 206 

Drinkwater, John, 117-119 

Duchesne, L., 282 

Dullness, 134, 135 

Duty, 274 

Dwight, President, 166, 199 

Dykes, John B., 262, 263, 
264 


Easter, 175 

Easter hymns, 175, 181 
Edessa, 61, 64 

Edification, 43, 143, 150 
Educational values, 148 
Edwards, Jonathan, 35, 36, 


38 
Eighteenth century hymn 
tune, 291 


“Elegance,” 122, 123 
Ellerton, John, 178, 206, 
284 
Elliott, Charlotte, 162 
Emerson, Ralph W., 115 
England, Church of 
Psalmody, 86, 103 
Hymnody, 106, 165, 172- 
174, 246-252 
Chants, 90 


Hymnody 


English Hymn, The, 283 
English Hymnal, 238, 239, 
241, 246, 273 


English Lyric, The, 111, 
133, 284 

English Psalm tune, 247, 
272 


“Enthusiasm,” 250 
Epiphanius, 61 
Epiphany, 179 
Ephraim, 64 
Ephrata music, 286 
Essays in Liturgiology, 282 
Este, Thomas, 247 
“Eucharist, 42 
Eucharistic hymnody, 41, 
Evangelical 
hymns (78), 122-124, 158 
hymns in America, 124 


party, 123 

revival, 37, 38, 122-124, 
156, 250 

settlement of hymnody, 


Evangelistic hymns, 38, 134, 
265-270 
Evening hymns, 157, 176 


Faber, Frederick W., 215, 


216 

Faithful Narratiwe (Ed- 
wards), 281 

Farel, 80 

Farrar, Frederic W., 30, 


112 
Faweett, John, 123 
Feelings, The, 146, 264 
Ferreri, Zacharias, 100, 283 
Florid tunes, 251, 255 
Florida, 252 


Index 


Folk song, 240, 273, 274 
Francis I, 102 
Francis, St., 100 
Free Church of Scotland, 34 
French 
Reformation, 79-85 
Psalmody, 84-85 
Music, 243-246, 247, 252 
Friends’ meeting, 20 
Fugues, 255, 256 


Gardner, George, 263 

Gaul, 70, 73 

Gauntlett, H. J., 262 

“General Confession,’ The, 
162 

Geneva, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 
102, 243 

Genevan melodies, 144, 243- 
246, 247, 252 

German hymnody. See Lu- 
ther 

Gibson, Mrs., 47 

Gifts, The, 35-38 

Gladness, 31-32 

Gloria in excelsis, 42, 61, 


73 
Gloria Patri, 73 
Glory song, 170 
Gnostics, 64 
Golden Treasury, The, 111 
Good Friday, 180 
Gore, Bishop, 263 
Gospel Hymns, 38, 265, 266 
Goss, Sir John, 262 
Gower, John H., 164 
Great Awakening, The, 35, 
36, 37, 38, 190 
Greatorex, H. W., 258 
Greek as the liturgical lan- 
guage, 61 


293 


Greek Church 
hymns, 24, 66, 173 
music, 235, 236 
Green’s Short History, 250 
Greene’s Cape Cod Folks, 
266 
Gregorian Chant, 236, 270, 
271 
Grounds and Rules of 
Musick, 253 
Groves’ Dictionary of Music, 
286 


Hall, C. Cuthbert, 214 

Fiallel, The, 294.1715: 233; 
281 

Hallelujah, 107 

Hallelujah meter, 109 

Harnack, 47 

Harris, Rendel, 47 

Hart, Andro, 247 

John, 123 

Hartopp, Sir John, 112 

Hastings, Thomas, 258, 260, 
286 

Haweis, Thomas, 123 

Hay, John, 231 


Heber, Reginald, 127-129, 
147 : 

Hebrew music, 232, 233, 
230. 272 


Helmore, Thomas, 237, 263 
Henry VIII, 103 

Herbert, George, 108, 202 
Heresy, 45, 64, 65, 83 
Herrick, Robert, 108 
Hesiod, 23 

Hierakas, 61 

Hilary, 68, 69, 73 
Hippolytus, 60 

Histoire du Psautier, 286 


294 


History and Growth of 
Church Music, 286 
History and Use of Hymns 

and Hymn Tunes, 287 
Hodge, Archibald A., 42 
Holiness, 124 
Holmes, Oliver W., 124 
Holy daies, 175 

Week, 179 
Holy Year, The, 144, 153, 

154 
Homer, hymns of, 23 
Homiletical ideal of wor- 

ship, 20, 21, 151, 274 
Hopkinson, Francis, 254 
Hore Lyrica, 111, 206 
“Hornpipes,” 250 
Hours, The, 70 
Huguenot psalmody, 85, 252 
Humanism, 99 
Huntingdon, Lady, 250 
Huntington, William R,, 

208 
Hussite hymns, 38, 75 
Hutton, Richard Holt, 146, 

284 
“HYMN,” in the Diction- 

aries, 22 [22 

in comparative religion, 
in the Septuagint, 23 

in St. Paul, 23, 46 

in St. Augustine, 23, 141 
in the Greek Church, 24 

in Testament of our Lord, 


3 
in the Latin Church, 24 
in Book of Common 
Prayer, 24 
in controversy, 25 
in modern usage, 25 
in literature, 23, 24 


Christian Hymnody 


Hymn Book, The 
Apostolic, 30, 45 
vernacular, 38, 75 
first English church, 108 
modern, 38, 261, 276 
function of, 19, 21, 275 
its make-up, 221-223, 284 
as a service book, 21, 176 

Hymn Tunes and Ther 

Story, 285 

HYMNS (zndzvidual) 

Abide with me; fast falls 
the eventide, 264 

According to Thy gracious 
word, 94 

Adoro Te devote, latens 
Deitas, 155 

Ah! lovely appearance of 
death, 158 

Alas! and did my Saviour 
bleed, 160, 217 

All hail the power of 
Jesus’ Name, 218 

All people that on earth 
do dwell, 210 

All praise to Him who 
dwells in bliss, 120 

All praise to Thee, my 
God, this night, 109 

Am I a soldier of the 
cross ?, 152 

And did those feet in an- 
cient time, 130 

Art thou weary, art thou 
languid?, 173 

As pants the hart for cool- 
ing streams, 105 

As the sun doth daily rise, 
176 

Awake, my soul, and with 
the sun, 109, 176 


Index 295 


HYMNS (individual) 


Beautiful isle of some- 
where, 131 

Before Jehovah’s awful 
throne, 202 

Behold the sun that seem’d 
but now, 107 

Behold what 
grace, 151 

Blesséd feasts of blessed 
martyrs, 174 

Bound upon the accursed 
tree, 129 

Brightest and best of the 
sons of the morning, 
129 

Britain was doomed to be 
a slave, 198 

By cool Siloam’s shady 
rill, 129 

Children of the heavenly 
King, 123, 156 

Christ the Lord is risen 
to-day, 120 

Christ, whose glory fills 
the skies, 120 

Christians, awake! salute 
the happy morn, 
212 

Come, let us join our 
friends above, 120 

Come, let us to the Lord 
our God, 94 

Come, Lord, and tarry 
not, 179 

Come, oh, come, with 
pious lays, 107 

Come, Thou long-expected 
Jesus, 120 

Death! ’tis a melancholy 
day, 152 


wondrous 


HYMNS (individual) 


Deep in the dust before 
Thy throne, 151 

Dies irae, dies illa, 212 

Eternal Father, Strong to 
save, 263 

Faith is the brightest evi- 
dence, 152 

Faith of our fathers, liv- 
ing still, 215 

Father, hear Thy chil- 
dren’s call, 164 

Father, whate’er of earthly 


bliss, 153 
Firmly I believe and 
truly, 144 


For all the saints who 
from their labors rest, 
170, 264 

For ever with the Lord, 
126 

For thee, O dear, dear 
country, 169 

From Calvary’s cross a 
fountain flows, 203 

From every stormy wind 
that blows, 162 

From Greenland’s icy 
mountains, 129 

Give me the lowest place, 
170 

Give me the wings of 
faith to rise, 170 

Give me to bow with 
Thee my head, 119 

Glorious things of thee 
are spoken, 166 

“Go, preach My gospel,” 
saith the Lord, 217 

God bless our native land, 
208 


296 Christian Hymnody 
HYMNS (individual) 


HYMNS (zndividual) 

God rest you merry, gen- 
tlemen, 159 

Great God, how infinite 
art Thou, 217 

Guide me, O Thou Great 
Jehovah, 123 

Hail, gladdening Light 
of His pure glory 
poured, 61 

Hark! from the tombs a 
doleful sound, 158 

Hark! how all the welkin 
rings, 120, 179 

Hark! my soul, it is the 
Lord, 208 

Hark! the herald angels 
sing, 120, 179 

Hark! the sound of holy 
voices, 170 

Hark! ’tis the watchman’s 
cry, 179 


Hasten, sinner, to be wise, 


3 
He sat to watch o’er cus- 
toms paid, 174 
Holy! Holy! Holy Lord, 


144 

Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord 
God Almighty, 142, 
147, 182 

Hosanna to the living 
Lord, 129 

How sad our state by na- 
ture is, 191 

How short and hasty is 
our life, 152 

Hush, my dear, lie still 
and slumber, 114 

I heard the voice of Jesus 
say, 152 


I love Thy kingdom, 
Lord, 166 

I’m but a stranger here, 
169 


Into the woods my Mas- 
ter went, 130 

Is the Bridegroom absent 
still 2, 179 


Jerusalem, my happy 
home, 126 

Jerusalem the _ golden, 
169, 212 


Jesu, dulcis memoria, 155 

Jesu, Lover of my soul, 
120, 122, 152, 154; 164; 
203, 210 

Jesus Christ is risen to- 
day, 181 

Jesus, in Thy dying woes, 
164 

Just as I am, without one 
plea, 162, 164 

Lead, kindly Light, 173, 
178, 210, 264 

Let tyrants shake their 
iron rods, 255 

Let our choir new anthems 
raise, 170 

Light of the world, we 
hail Thee, 217 

Light’s abode, 
Salem, 169 

Lord, her watch Thy 
Church is keeping, 167 

Lord, it belongs not to my 
care, 110 

Lord, when we bend be- 
fore Thy throne, 177 

Love Divine, all loves ex- 
celling, 120, 210, 214 


celestial 


Index 297 


HYMNS (individual) HYMNS (individual) 


Mistaken souls that dream 
of heaven, 151 

My country, ’tis of thee, 
208 

My God, how endless is 
Thy love, 114 

My God, is any hour so 
sweet, 162 

My life’s a Shade, my 
daies, 109 

My Lord, my Love, was 
crucified, 110 

My sins, my sins, my 
Saviour, 162 

My song is love unknown, 
109 

My soul, there is a coun- 
trie, 108 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
208, 284 

Never weather-beaten sail 
more willing bent to 
shore, 106 

New every morning is the 
love, 176 

Not all the blood of 
beasts, 151 

Now the day is over, 
176 

O come, all ye faithful, 
217 

O day of rest and glad- 
ness, 144, 177 

O Deus, ego amo Te, 155 

O Father, hear my morn- 
ing prayer, 176 

Oh, for a closer walk with 
God, 123, 156 

O God of Bethel, by 
whose hand, 94 


O Jesu, Thou the Virgin’s 
Crown, 174 

O little town of Bethle- 
hem, 94, 179 

O Lord of heaven and 
earth and sea, 144 

O Love that wilt not let 
me go, 152 

O Paradise! O Paradise!, 
1$7; 217 

O Sacred Head, now 
wounded, 180 

O Sinner, for a little 
space, 174 

O what their joy and their 
glory must be, 169 

On our way rejoicing, 214 

One sweetly = solemn 
thought, 217 

Onward, Christian  sol- 
diers, 166, 229 

Our blest Redeemer, ere 
He breathed, 182 

Our God, our Help in 
ages past, 114 

Prayer is the soul’s sincere 
desire, 126, 162 

Praise God from whom 
all blessings flow, 177 

Rejoice, the Lord is King, 
235 

Return, O wanderer, re- 
turn, 151 

Ride on! ride on in maj- 
esty, 129 

Rock of Ages, cleft for 
me, 122, 163, 196, 197, 
203 

Round the sacred City 
gather, 166 


298 


HYMNS (individual) 


Safe in the arms of Jesus, 
120 

Saviour, again to Thy 
dear Name we aise, 
178 

Shall we not love thee, 
Mother dear, 174 

Shepherd of tender youth, 


9 

Sin, like a venemous dis- 
ease, 152 

Sing Alleluia forth in du- 
teous praise, 170 

Sing to the Lord with 
joyful voice, 202 

Spirit Divine, attend our 
prayers, 177 

Sun of my soul, Thou 
Saviour dear, 173, 176, 
212 

Sunset and evening star, 
130, 217 

Sweet flow’rets of the 
martyr band, 174 

The Church’s one Foun- 
dation, 145, 166, 184 

The chariot! the chariot! 
Its wheels roll on fire, 
129 

The day is gently sinking 
to a close, 176 [217 

The day of resurrection, 

The earth is hushed in si- 
lence, 177 

The God of Abraham 
praise, 126 

The Lord descended from 
above, 104 

The Son of God goes 
forth to war, 129 


Christian Hymnody 
HYMNS (individual) 


The world is very evil, 
169 

There is a blesséd home, 
170 

There is an eye that never 
sleeps, 162 

There is a fountain filled 
with blood, 203 

There is a green hill far 
away, 173 

There is a land of pure 
delight, 114 

These things shall be,—a 
loftier race, 212 


This is the day of light, 


177 

Thou didst leave Thy 
throne and Thy kingly 
crown, 217 

Thou hidden love of God, 
whose height, 115 

*T was on that night when 
doomed to know, 94 

Up to those bright and 
glorious hills, 108 

Veni, Creator Spiritus, 24 

View me, Lord, a work of 
Thine, 106 

When I can read my title 
clear, 154, 170 

When morning gilds the 
skies, 264 

When I survey the won- 
drous cross, 114, 212, 
284. 

When our heads are 
bowed with woe, 129 

When through the torn 
sail the wild tempest is 
streaming, 129 


Index 299 


HYMNS (individual) 

Who hath believed Thy 
word, 151 

While shepherds watched 
their flocks by night, 94 

Why should the children 
of a King, 151 

Why do we mourn depart- 
ing friends, 152 

Why doth that impious 
Herod fear, 174 

With glory clad, with 
strength arrayed, 105 

Ye Christian heralds, go 
proclaim, 214 

HYMNS (grouped) 

Advent, 178 

Ambrosian, 18, 68-71, 73 

Arian, 64, 67 

Ascension, 182 

Breviary, 24, 71, 172, 282 

carols, 179 

cheerful, 31, 32, 76, 157, 
159 

Christian, 22, 23, 46 

Christmas, 179 

churchly, 166-170, 184 

closing, 177 

Communion, 27, 28, 41, 
164, 173 

confession, of, 161 

degenerate, 268, 269 

didactic, 144 

doctrinal, 143, 146 

dull, 134, 135 

Easter, 175, 181 [150 

edification, of, 43, 143, 

Epiphany, 179 

Eucharistic, 41, 43 

evangelical, 78, 122-124, 
158 


HYMNS (grouped) 


evangelistic, 38, 134, 265- 
270 

evening, 157, 176 

experiential, 38, 152 

festal, 41 

German, 38, 76 

Gnostic, 64 

Good Friday, 180 

“Gospel,” 38, 265 

Greek, 61, 66 

Heaven, of, 168 

heretical, 64, 65 

“I and my,” 44, 152, 264 

inspirational, 35 

Kingdom, of the, 168 

Latin, 68, 173 

Litany, 164 

liturgical, 170 

byrachl 2 40950 12307 128, 
130, 136 

metrical, 69, 77 

missionary, 179 

mnemonic, 143 

morbid, 32, 158, 176 

morning, 176 

New Jerusalem, 169 

objective, 154 

opening, 177 

Pagan, 22 

Palm Sunday, 179 

Passion, 180 

Pauline, 48-51 

penitence, of, 161 

poetic, 99-102, 106-110, 
115-122 

polemic, 185 

praise, of, 23, 63, 141 

prayer, of, 63, 162 

prose, 25 

real, 159, 161 


300 
HYMNS (grouped) 


repentance, of, 161 
sectarian, 189 
sentimental, 160, 264 
sequences, 24, 74, 
282 
sermonic, 150 
service, of, 167 
social service, of, 168 
spirituals, 265, 274 
subjective, 152, 264 
Sunday, 177 
Sunday school, 131, 132, 
265, 267, 287 
Syriac, 64 
Trinity, 182 
Unitarian, 
222 
vernacular, 38, 75 
“We” hymns, 152 
“Weary Willie,” 157 
wholesome, 155 
Whitsunday, 182 
Hymns, their proper print- 
ing, 221-223 
Hymns, ancient and mod- 
ern, 170, 173, 174, 238, 
202,208; 270s oo 
Hymns and Choirs, 
193, 285 
Hymns and Sacred Poems, 
116 
Hymnes and Songs of the 
Church, 106, 107 
Hymns for the Christian 
Church and Home, 215, 
285 
Hymnal, The 
Presbyterian, 
of 1866, 93 


of 1874, 153, 263 


12; 


200, 


ores 


192, 


Christian Hymnody 


Hymnal, The 
Presbyterian, 
of 1895, 131, 178, 207- 
218, 221 
of 1911, 216, 218, 224 
Protestant Episcopal 
of 1891, 207 
of 1916, 178, 238 
Hymnology 
of German origin, 16 
rise of, 17 
as related to theology, 15, 
17-22 
Hymnology, Dictionary of, 
17, 205 


“IT and My” hymns, 44, 152, 
264 

Ignatius, 60 

Inattention, 148, 284 

India, native hymns, 34 

Individualism, 44, 153 

Inspirational hymns, 35-38 

Instrumental music, 235 

Ireland, 73 

Irving, Edward, 36 

Italy, 70 


James, St., §7, 159 

Jerome, 68 [169 

Jerusalem (new) motive, 

Jewish music, 232, 233, 234, 
235, 271 

Jewish People in the Time 
of Christ, 281 

John, St., 47 

Johnson, Samuel, 132, 133, 
209 

Jones, Darius E., 261 

Julian, John, 17, 205 

Justin Martyr, 62 


Index 


Keats, John, 127 

Keble, John, 61, 127, 212 
Ken, Bishop, 109 
Knapp, William, 251 
Knox, John, 29, 42 
Koch, Eduard E., 206 
Kyrie eleison, 61 


Lanier, Sidney, 130 

Laodicea, Synod of, 65, 259 

Lapsley, R. A., 265, 287 

Last Supper, 27-29, 32, 233 

Latin 

as Church language, 67, 
75> 77,100 
hymns, 68, 69, 172, 173 

Law, William, 274 

Leavitt, Joshua, 260 

Le Challeux, 252 

Leclercq, H., 282 

Leo X, 99, 100 

Life of the Spirit and Life 
of To-day, 157 

Lindsay, Principal, 281 

Lightwood, James T., 285 

Litanies, 164 

Literature and Dogma, 134 

Liturgical hymnody, 170 

Liturgics, 20, 21 

Long Meter, 69 

Longfellow, Henry W., 24, 


252 
Lord’s Supper, 27-29, 32, 
233 [285 
Lorenz, Edmund L., 274, 
Love Feast, 40, 62 
Lowell, Amy, 209 
Lowrie, Walter, 52, 281 
Lowry, Robert, 266 
Luke, St., canticles in, 30, 


46 


301 


Luther, Martin 
his canon, 78 
equipment, 75, 241 
hymns, 76, 283 
work, 75, 77, 240 
Lyon, James, 254 
Lyrical Movement, 
127-138 
test, 122, 128;:277 


The, 


Macartney, Clarence E., 161, 
285 
McPherson, John, 45, 46 
Magnificat, 30 
Marcion, 64 
Marot, Clement, 101, 102 
Marot, Clement, et Le 
Psautier Huguenot, 286 
Martineau, James, 214, 216 
Mason, John, 110 
Lowell, 238, 256-258, 260 
Massy The. 245 ats) 7459755 
171 
Massachusetts Bay, 189, 253 
Matheson, George, 152 
Metcalf, Frank J., 286 
Methodist 
hymns, 115 
tunes, 250 
hymn book, 115, 202 
Metrical Psalmody, 81-85 
Milan, 68, 69, 70, 73, 236 
Miller, Joaquin, 28, 32 
Milman, Henry H., 
129 
Milton on poetry, 121 
Milton’s Psalms, 104 
Missal, The, 171, 172 
Missionary hymns, 179 
Mnemonic hymns, 143 
Mona, 231 


128, 


302 


Monastic hymnody, 71 

Monk, William H., 262, 264 

Monseli, J. S. B., 214, 218 

Montgomery, James, 94, 
126 20,412 709 

Moody and Sankey, 38, 266 

Moore, Thomas, 128 

Morbid hymns, 32, 158, 176 

Morning hymns, 176 

Mother Goose, 217 

Mozarabic and Ambrosian 
Rites, The, 282 

Murray, Dean, 23 

Muse in Council, 117 

Music (bibliography), 285 

Music and Letters, 263 

Music and Religion, 27, 
228-232 

Music in the History of the 
Western Church, 243, 
265, 285 

Music of the Pilgrims, 252, 
286 

Musical Ministries in the 
Church, 287 

Musical Taste, Dissertation 
on, 258, 286 


Narrative of Facts (Bax- 
ter), 281 

Nason, Elias, 193 

Neale, John Mason, 24, 168, 
173, 217 

Neander, Augustus, 65 

Negro spirituals, 274 

Nepos, 60 

New England psalmody, 
253-258 

New Version, 104, 249, 284 

Newman, John H., 144, 
264 


Christian Hymnody 


Newton, John, 93, 123, 126, 
166 


“Non-liturgical churches,” 
15, 20, 174, 182 

Northampton, 38, 281 

“Nunc dimittis,” 30, 81, 155 


“Odes,” 39, 46, 47 

Odes of Solomon, 47, 48, 
281 

Office, Daily, 24, 65,915.97 3+ 
74> 75> 77: 279 

Old Version, 104, 283 

Olney Hymns, 93, 123, 204 

Opening hymns, 177 

Ordinance of Sacred Song, 
15, 26, 33 

Ordo psallendi, 71 

Organ Question, The, 236, 
286 

Organs, 236 

Origen, 49 

Oxford Hymn Book, 106, 


144 
Oxford Revival, 165-174, 
262 


Palgrave, Francis T., 110, 


111 
Palm Sunday hymns, 179 
Palmer, Roundell (Lord 
Selborne), 17, 205, 
285 


Paraphrases, Scottish, 94 

Parlor music, 259 

Park and Phelps, 192-195, 
205 

Parker, Horatio, 230, 231 

Part Song, 259, 262 

Passion hymns, 180 

Passover Ritual, 29 


Index 


Pastor’s part, the, v, vi, 15, 
137, 148, 160, 178, 183, 
184, 232, 269, 274-277 
Paul, St., and Hymnody 
his ideal, 39-44 
his practice, 35, 36, 40, 57 
his hymn writing, 50, 51 
Paul of Samosata, 63, 64 
“Pause,” 212 
Penitence, 161 
Peronnet, Edward, 123 
Peters, John E., 286 
Phelps, Austin, 192 
Pierpont, John, 32 
Pilgrim Fathers, 252 
Pinafore, 229 
Pius X, 234, 237 
Plainsong, 236, 270, 271 
Playford, John, 248 
Pliny, 46, 61 
Plymouth, 252 
Plymouth Collection, 
261 
Poesie Liturgique, 282 
Polemic hymns, 185 
Poetry 
and truth, 18 
and religion, 19 
sacred, 17, 22, 133, 227 
and hymns, 17, 99-138, 
227, 284 
Drinkwater on, 117 
Milton on, 121 
modern study of, 209 
office of, 118, 159 
scope of, 133, 138 
and popularity, 122 
of the Psalter, 99, 138 
Porteus, Dr., 236 
Poteat, Herbert Mc N., 269, 
270 


196, 


303 

Practical Discourse on 

Hymn Singing, 244, 
286 


Practical Hymnology, 269 
Praise, 23, 31, 141, 142 
Pratt, Waldo S., 252 
Prayer in hymnody, 162 
attitude of, 163 
and praise, 63 
Premillenarism, 178 
Presbyterian Alliance, 273 
unity and hymns, 58 
hymnody, 124 
Presbyterians 
Scottish. 
American 
communion service, 29, 
42 
Directory for Worship, 
21204251109) 175; 


191 
Hymnal (1866), 93 
Hymnal (1874), 153; 
26 


See Scottish 


3 
Hymnal (1895), 131, 
178, 207-218, 221 
Hymnal (1911), 216, 


218, 224 

New School, 196 

Psalms and Hymns 
(1831), 172, 179, 
202 

Psalms and Hymns 


(1843), 93, 172, 179, 
194, 195, 202, 204 
Worship, 21, 29, 42, 
163, 224 
Private psalms, 61, 63 
Prose hymns, 24 
Protestant Episcopal 
hymn books, 221 


304 


Protestant Episcopal 
Hymnal (1891), 207 
Hymnal, New (1916), 

178, 238 
plainsong in, 237, 238 
Prothero’s Psalms in Human 
Life, 283 
Psalm, ‘“Jewish-Christian,” 
31, 33, 46 
“Psalm. 


in St. Paul’s Epistles, 37, 
6 


6 
Psalm headings, 232, 286 
Psalm tunes 
Jewish, 232, 233, 235 
English, 247, 272 
Psalmody (metrical) 
origins, 80-82 
in Reformed churches, 82, 
85, 86, 87 
in Church of England, 86, 
105 
in America, 86 
Psalmody (prose) 
Jewish, 27, 33 
Greek, 33, 63, 65, 66 
Latin, 67, 71-74 
Lutheran, 76, 77 
Church of England, go 
Psalmody, the “Gift,” 35- 


37 
“Psalmody Controversy, 
The, 557,, 191 


Psalms, The Book of, 
as poetry, 99, 138 
as the inherited hymnal, 
1 
as a sealed hymnal, 28, 
31, 87 
“Psalms and Hymns,” 91, 
g2 


Christian Hymnody 


“Psalms, hymns and spirit- 
ual odes,” 46, 84 
Psalms as Liturgies, 286 
Psalms in Human Life, 283 
Psalms of David in meter, 
92, 105, 109, 190, 191 
Psalms of Solomon, 47, 281 
Psychology, 20, 157 
Puritans, 109, 189, 190, 191, 
235 
“Purity,” 189 
Quarles, Francis, 108 
Quick, Synodicon, 283 
Ravenscroft, Thomas, 247, 
253 
Reality in hymns, 159 
Redhead, Richard, 263 
Reformation, 75, 79 
Reformed churches, 79 
Psalmody in, 82, 85, 86, 
87 
their musical inheritance, 
245 
Reformed worship, 79, 80 
Regent Square Church, 36 
“Regular Singing” contro- 
versy, 253 
Religious Confessions and 
Confessants, 155, 285 
Renan, 235 
Renascence, The, 99 
Repentance in hymnody, 161 
Restoration, The, 109, 110, 
248 
Revivals 
Early American, 34 
Evangelical, 37, 38, 122- 
124, 156, 158, 250 
Great Awakening, 35, 36, 
37, 38, 190 


a = 


Index 


Revivals 


Methodist, 118, 


37, 38, 
250 
Moody and Sankey, 38, 
266 
Oxford, 165-174, 262 
Welsh, 36 
Richard and Painter’s Chris- 
tian Worship, 283 
Rippon, John, 196 
Robinson, Charles S., 165, 
207 
Rogers, Charles, 206 
Romaine, William, 198 
Romantic Revival, 127 
Rome, 61, 72, 74, 99 
Root, George F., 266 
Rossettis, The, 115 
“Rous’ Version,” 92, 
109, 190, 191 


Sabbath Hymn Book, 192, 
194, 261 

Sanday, William, 144 

Sandys’ Psalms, 104 

Saints’ Days, 174, 175 


105, 


Saintsbury, George, 121, 
284 

Sankey, Ira D., 38, 266 

Schelling, Felix E., 111, 
133 


Schumann, Robert, 229 
Schiirer’s Jewish People, 281 
Scott, Sir Walter, 105, 128 
Scottish 
Directory, 29, 42, 175 
Paraphrases, 94 
Psalter (1564), 246, 247 
(1650), 92, 105, 109, 
190, 191 
Tunes, 247 


305 


Scripture texts 
Psalms—23rd, 154 
rl ey yk 
75th, 198 
100th, 202 
103rd, 29, 42 
St. Matthew 26: 30—27 
St. Luke (the canticles in), 
39 31 
St. John 4:24—20 
Acts 2: 46-47—30 


ee 


“ec 


«ec 


4: 23-30—31 
1 Cor. 11:33—40 
“ 13: 1—236 
“ce 13—51 
Galas 
“14: 7-8—236 
“ -14:15—50 
“14: 26—35, 40 
Ephesians 1—51 
5: 18-20—40, 
41 
“5214-48, 49 
Colossians 3: Gos 
42, 43 


1 Tim. 3: 16—49 

2 Tim. 2:11-13—49 

St. James §:13—57, 159 

Revelation 4 and ae 
Seasonable Thoughts . 

N. E., 38, 281 
Sectarian hymnody, 185 
Sedgwick, Catharine, 135 

Daniel, 205 
Selborne, Lord (R. Palmer), 

17, 205, 285 
Sentimentality, 

264 
Septuagint, 33, 46, 61, 67, 

234 


Sequence, 


160, 230, 


24, 74, 172, 282 


306 Christian 
Serzous Call, 275 
Sermonic hymns, 150 
Service, Hymn of, 167 
Sewall, Judge, 253 
Shakespeare, 103 
Shelley, Percy B., 24, 127 
Short Hymns, 93 
“Short Tunes,” 247, 248 
Simplicity, 137, 230 
Sidney’s Psalms, 104 
Simeon, 154 
Sin, 161 
Singing 
antiphonal, 28, 69, 234, 
236 
apostolic, 234 
choir, 66, 174, 258, “ar 
congregational 
not primitive, 28, 234 
duty of, 274 
decay of, 248-250, 253, 
259 
Eastern, 69, 235 
in Latin Church, 69, 
236 
at Lord’s Supper, 27, 
233 
pleasure of, 275 
“Regular,” 253 
responsive, 28 
Singing of Psalm Tunes, 
Introduction to, 286 
Skene’s The Lord’s Supper, 
281 
Social service hymnody, 152, 
168 [282 
Socrates’ Church History, 
Solomon 
Odes of, 47, 48, 281 
Psalms of, 47, 281 
Song of, 107 


Hymnody 


Some Thoughts concerning 
the Revival, 281 

Song, the spirit of, vii, 44, 
162, 277 

Song of Solomon, 107 

Songs of the Church, 165 

Songs of the Sanctuary, 165 

Songs of Zion, 265, 287 

Sonneck, O. G., 286 

Southey, Robert, 128 

Sozomen’s Church History, 
282 

Spain, 72, 73 

Spenser, Edmund, 24 

Spirit of song, The, vii, 44, 
162, 277 

“Spiritual Odes,” 39, 46, 47 

Spiritual Songs for Social 
W orship, 260 

Spirituals, 265, 274 

Spirituality, vi, 44, 77, 137; 
229, 230 

Stainer, Sir John, 262 

Stanley, Dean, 51, 281 

Steele, Anne, 114, 153 

Sternhold, Thomas, 103, 104 

Sternhold and Hopkins, 103, 
104, 189, 210, 246, 253 

Stone, Samuel J., 145, 
166 

Story of Hymns and Tunes, 
The, 286 

Strasburg, 81, 101 

Structure of a hymn, 213, 


ppsO. 
Students’ Christian Move- 
ment, 130 


Students’ Hymnal, 273 

Studies in Worship Music, 
285 

Subjective hymns, 152, 264 


Index 


“Subject-matter of Praise,” 
16, 141 
Suggestion: its power, 156, 

157 
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 229 
Sunday hymns, 175, 177 
Sunday school hymns, 131, 
265-267, 287 
President Wilson on, 132 
Surrey and Wyatt, 103 
Swinburne, Algernon, 24 
Symonds, J. Addington, 212 
Syriac hymnody, 64 


Tate and Brady, 94, 104, 


249 

Taunton, Ethelred L., 238, 
239 

Taylor, Jeremy, 109 

Te Deum, 25 

Teaching of the Apostles, 
41, 47, 62 


Teaching power of hymns, 
44, 64, 143, 148, 149 

Temple Melodies, 261 

Tennyson, Lord, 130, 142, 


230 
Tertullian, 59, 60, 62, 64, 
68 


Testament of Our Lord, 63 

Tests of subjective hymns, 
155-162 

Text (textual criticism) of 
hymns, Lecture V 

Thanksgiving, 41, 42 

Theology and Hymnology, 
15-21 . 

Thring, Godfrey, 206, 210 

Tinkering of hymns, 194- 
203, 209, 210, 214-218 

Toledo, Council of, 72, 73 


397 


Tours, Council of, 72 
Toplady, Augustus M., 122, 
125, 202 
Tracts for the Times, 173 
Traherne, Thomas, 108 
Treasury of Sacred Song, 
110 
Trinity Hymns, 147 
Tufts, John, 253 
Tune, the hymn-; essentials 
of, 229 
TUNES (individual) 
Adeste Fideles, 251 
Aurelia, 262 
Autumn, 245 
Blessed Home, 262 
Cambridge, 247 
Canonbury, 229 
Cheshire, 247 
Chester, 255 
Commandments, 144 
Dumferline, 247 
Dundee, 247, 271 
Easter Hymn, 181, 249, 
252 
Ein’ Feste Burg, 240 
Eventide, 262, 264 
For All the Saints, 264 
French, 247 
Garden City, 231 
Glory Song, 170 
Hamburg, 238 
Hanover, 249, 252 
Helmsley, 251 
Just As I Am, 164 
Laudes Domini, 264 
Lux Benigna, 262, 264 
Majesty, 256 
Martyrs, 247 
Melita, 263 
Miles Lane, 250, 251 


308 


TUNES (individual) 


Morning Hymn, 251 

Mount Sion, 231 

Old Hundredth, 245 

Oxford, 247 

Paradise, 262 

Passion Chorale, 181 

St. Anne, 249, 272 

St. Gertrude, 229 

St. Matthew’s Tune, 249 

Southwell, 247 

Stockport, 251 

The Stilt, 247 

Toplady, 287 

Veni Emmanuel, 238 

Wareham, 251 

Winchester, 247 

Windsor, 247 

TUNES (grouped) 

Anglican, 263 

Bay Psalm Book, of, 253 

Billings’, 255, 256 

Bourgeois’, 243-246, 247, 
252 

Bradbury’s, 265 

Camp-meeting, 260, 265 

Choir, 258, 259, 274 

Chorales, 240-242, 272 

“Common,” 247 

Damon’s, 247 

“David’s,” 248 

Degenerate, 268-270 

Dykes’, 262-264 

Eighteenth century, 251 

Evangelistic, 265 

Florid,' 261 )252 

Folk Song, 273, 274 

Fugueing, 255, 256 

Genevan, 144, 243-246, 
2AT ae [266 

“Gospel Hymns,” 265, 


Christian Hymnody 


TUNES (grouped) 
Greek, 235 
Gregorian, 236, 270, 271 
Hebrew, 232, 233, 235, 
271 
Historic, 271 
Hornpipes, 250 
Hymns ancient and moda- 
ern, of, 262 
Jewish, 23251 /233,082 485 
235, 271 
Luther’s, 240-242 
Mason’s, 257, 261 
Methodist, 250 
Moody and Sankey, 266 
Oxford, 262-264 
Parker’s, 231 
Parlor Music, 259 
Pilgrim Fathers, of, 252 
Plainsong, 236, 263, 270, 
ahs [292 
Psalm (English), 247, 
Rag-time, 268 
Ravenscroft’s, 247, 253 
Redhead’s, 263 
Scottish, 247 
“Short,” 247, 248 
Spirituals, 265, 274 
Sternhold and Hopkins’, 
245, 246, 253 
Sunday school, 265, 267 
Victorian, 263 
Welsh, 272 
Wesley’s, 250 
OW estert, cage 
Tupper, Martin F., 104 
Two Books of Ayres, 106 


Underhill, Evelyn, 157 
Unitarian hymns, 200, 215, 
223 


Index 


United Presbyterians, 92 
Urania, 254, 286 


Valentine, 60, 64 
Vaughan, Henry, 108 
Veni Creator Spiritus, 24 
Vernacular hymns, 38, 75 
Verse—its power, 144 
Victoria, Queen, 251 
Victorian hymn tune, 263 


Wachernagel, 206 

Wainwright, John, 251 

Waller, Life of, 132 

Walter, Thomas, 254 

Warfield, Benjamin B., 30, 
6 


Warrington, James, 286 
Watts, Isaac, 73, 88-91, 125 
his “System of Praise,” 


his hymn writing, 88, 150 
his texts, 198-202 
first editions, 206 
and poetry, 110-114 
and music, 249 
Hore Lyrica, 111, 206 
Hymns and Spiritual 
Songs, 88, 93, 206 
Psalms of David imitated, 
eo, G),, 92, 191, 
195, 198 
“Watts entire,” 201 
in America, 190, 199 
school of, 114, 125, 151 
“We” hymns, 152 
“Weary Willie” hymns, 157 
Week of Prayer, 179 
Weizsacher, 52, 281 
Welsh 
hymn competitions, 36 


309 
Welsh 


revival, 36 
tunes, 272, 273 
Wesley, Charles 
his hymn writing, 
119, 152 
as a poet, 117-122 
Montgomery on, 125 
Short Hymns, 93 
Wesley, John 
and hymnody, 115-117 
and music, 250 
and education, 116 
and poetry, 115, 116, 129 
and tinkering, 202 
Wesley, Samuel, 115 
Samuel Sebastian, 262 
West, Benjamin, 231 
“Western melodies,’ 273 
Westminster Assembly, 105 
its Directory, 29, 42, 175 
Whitefield, George, 190, 
202, 250 
Whitman, Walt, 222 
Whitsunday hymns, 182 
Whittier, John G., 212 
Wholesome hymns, 155 
Williams, William, 123 
Wilson, Archibald W., 286 
Wilson, Dr., 33 
Wilson, President, on S. S. 
hymns, 132 
Wither, George, 106-109 
Worcester, Samuel, 199, 201 
Worship 
liturgical conception of, 
21, 274 
homiletical conception of, 
20, 21, 151, 274 
Presbyterian, 21, 29, 42, 
224 


115, 


310 


Worship 
Quaker, 20 
Zwinglian, 20 
Worship and Music, 263, 
287 
Wordsworth, Christopher, 
144, 153, 176, 177 


Christian Hymnody 


Wordsworth, William, 127, 
128 
Wyatt, Sir T., 103 


Yattendon Hymnal, 244 


Zurich, 80 
Zwingli, H., 20, 79, 80, 143 


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